Booklist articles from May 2009

Booklist archives from May 2009

Mystery showcase.(SPECIAL THIS ISSUE)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Our Hard-Boiled Gazetteer goes south of the border this year, with a scan of crime fiction from Latin America (p.8). The hard-boiled novel was born in the rain and fog of Dashiell Hammett's San Francisco, but it...

Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgetting.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgetting. By Tracy Kidder. Aug. 2009. 304p. Random, $26 (9781400066216). 305.896. Deo was a young medical student in 1994 when ethnic tensions between Hutu and Tutsi in...

The Best of Times.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... The Best of Times. By Penny Vincenzi. July 2009. 608p. Doubleday, $25.95 (9780385528245). General Fiction. On a sweltering Friday afternoon in August, traffic is backed up on the M4 highway outside of London when a truck...

The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein. By Peter Ackroyd. Oct. 2009. 368p. Doubleday/Nan A. Talese, $27 (9780385530842). General Fiction. Ackroyd's newest zesty historical novel, a clever retelling of Mary Shelley's archetypal...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... * Gabriel Garcia Marquez. By Gerald Martin. May 2009. 672p. Knopf, $37.50 (9780307271778). 863. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The great Colombian novelist--winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize, the chief exponent of "magic realism," and...

Skin Trade.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Skin Trade. By Laurell K. Hamilton. June 2009. 496p. Berkley, $26.95 (9780425227725). Horror. The seventeenth book in Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series opens with the St. Louis necromancer-cum-U.S. marshal receiving a...

South of Broad.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... South of Broad. By Pat Conroy. Aug. 2009. 528p. Doubleday/Nan A. Talese, $29.95 (9780385413053). General Fiction. An unlikely group of Charlestonian teens forms a friendship in 1969, just as the certainties and verities of...

The Wish Maker.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... The Wish Maker. By Ali Sethi. June 2009. 304p. Riverhead, $25.95 (9781594488757). General Fiction. This semi-autobiographical debut novel takes readers to contemporary Lahore, Pakistan, where narrator Zaki Shirazi and his...

BooklistOnline.(Chat Room)
May 1, 2009... QUESTIONS FROM OUR USERS We get a steady stream of questions on how to take full advantage of all the features and functionality Booklist Online has to offer. If you're a Booklist Online subscriber, or if you're thinking of subscribing,...

The year's best crime novels.(Mystery Showcase)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Rarely does one year in crime fiction deliver swan songs for two classic series. But that's precisely what seems to have happened in 2009. First, John Harvey brings back the great Charlie Resnick only to leave the...

A hard-boiled gazetteer to Latin America.(Mystery Showcase)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In a duel of literary traditions, pitting various regions of the world against one another, my money is on Latin America. Yes, I know it's never smart to bet against Shakespeare, but is there any chunk of the globe...

Mystery travel.(Mystery Showcase)(travel guides)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... It's no mystery: Latin America begins with Mexico and includes every country all the way down to the far tips of Chile and Argentina. South America, on the other hand, refers only to the countries of that continent, from Colombia down to those...

Story behind the Story: Michael D. Beil's The Red Blazer Girls: the math behind the mystery.
May 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Math behind the Mystery As the many reviews of mystery books in this issue show, the genre is alive and thriving. A close read also demonstrates that there are many ways to write a mystery. First-time...

Alibi.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Alibi. By Teri Woods. Aug. 2009. 272p. Grand Central, $21.99 (9780446581691). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Street-lit queen Teri Woods moves into crime thrillers with her latest novel. Daisy Mae lives a hard life with an ailing...

The Alpine Uproar.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... The Alpine Uproar. By Mary Daheim. June 2009. 384p. Ballantine, $24 (9780345502551). Clive Berentsen kills Alvin De Muth with a pool cue in a barroom brawl, immediately confessing to the crime. Emma Lord, owner of the weekly...

Back to the Coast.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Back to the Coast. By Saskia Noort. Tr. by Laura Vroomen. May 2009. 287p. Bitter Lemon, paper, $14.95 (9781904738374). Soul singer Maria chooses to abort an unplanned pregnancy rather than bring a third child into her already...

Bait.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Bait. By Nick Brownlee. July 2009. 336p. Minotaur, $24.95 (9780312550219). Jake Moore retired from Scotland Yard to become a partner in a Kenyan charter-boat business. Five years in, things aren't going well. The civil war outside...

5 Bodies to Die For.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... * 5 Bodies to Die For. By Stephanie Bond. May 2009. 320p. Harlequin/MIRA, paper, $7.99 (9780778327059). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Carlotta Wren, Neiman Marcus sales associate by day and a body mover-amateur sleuth by night, is in...

Alexandria.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Alexandria. By Lindsey Davis. May 2009. 352p. Minotaur, $24.95 (9780312379018). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The nineteenth entry in Davis' lively and consistently original series (after Saturnalia, in 2007) finds Roman investigator...

The Baker Street Letters.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... The Baker Street Letters. By Michael Robertson. June 2009. 320p. Minotaur, $24.95 (9780312538125). It's a well-known and rather curious fact that some people write letters to fictional characters, that fictional creations can...

Bangkok Dragons, Cape Cod Tears.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Bangkok Dragons, Cape Cod Tears. By Randall Peffer. June 2009. 320p. Bleak House, $24.95 (9781606480373); paper, $14.95 (9781606480380). Lawyer Michael Decastro jets off to Bangkok when he receives an e-mail from his missing...

Blackstone and the New World.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Blackstone and the New World. By Sally Spencer. June 2009. 192p. Severn, $27.95 (9780727867544). Set in New York in 1900, Spencer's latest installment in her likable Inspector Sam Blackstone series has the intrepid British...

Blood Bayou.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Blood Bayou. By Karen Young. May 2009. 432p. Simon & Schuster/Howard, paper, $14.99 (9781416587507). Camille St. James, a Baton Rouge lawyer, works tirelessly on the Truth Project, an advocacy group dedicated to overturning...

Capture.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Capture. By Robert K. Tanenbaum. June 2009. 400p. Pocket, $26 (9781439148600). Butch Karp has a lot on his plate, and the reader has a lot to follow. A noted Broadway producer is accused of murder; a hung jury results in a...

Bad Things Happen.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Bad Things Happen. By Harry Dolan. July 2009. 352p. Putnam, $24.95 (9780399155635). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Take a ride on the mean streets of... Ann Arbor? This tasty tale employs the somewhat common trope of crime among...

The Big Steal.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... * The Big Steal. By Emyl Jenkins. July 2009. 368p. Algonquin, paper, $13.95 (9781565124462). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In her second book, following Stealing with Style (2005), real-life antiques appraiser Jenkins again imbues...

Cemetery Dance.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Cemetery Dance. By Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. May 2009. 448p. Grand Central, $26.99 (9780446580298). It takes a certain amount of guts to start a novel by killing off a popular recurring character, but no one has ever...

The Chalk Circle Man.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... The Chalk Circle Man. By Fred Vargas. Tr. by Sian Reynolds. June 2009. 256p. Penguin, paper, $14 (9780143115953). When European mystery authors make their way to the U.S., it often happens that their books are published out of...

Choker.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Choker. By Frederick Ramsay. June 2009. 290p. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (9781590586358). In his fourth outing (after Stranger Room, 2008), Sheriff Ike Schwartz of small-town Picketsville, Virginia, is lured away from a long-overdue...

The Cold Light of Mourning.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... The Cold Light of Mourning. By Elizabeth J. Duncan. May 2009. 272p. Minotaur, $24.95 (9780312558536). This debut mystery is a winner of the Minotaur Books/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition. Manicurist...

Dark Paradise.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... * Dark Paradise. By Lono Waiwaiole. 2009. 310p. Dennis McMillan, $35 (9780939767618). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Waiwaiole's Wiley series, starring a Portland, Oregon, poker player and part-time detective, is nothing if not dark,...

Faces.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... * Faces. By Martina Cole. July 2009. 502p. Grand Central, $24.99 (9780446179973). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Danny Cadogan is 14 years old when his father runs out Ion a gambling debt, leaving behind his wife and children. Danny,...

The Cutting.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... The Cutting. By James Hayman. July 2009. 336p. Minotaur, $24.95 (9780312531294). When a missing 16-year-old is found with her nude body showing signs of torture and her heart removed with surgical precision while she was still...

Dead Men's Dust.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Dead Men's Dust. By Matt Hilton. May 2009. 336p. Morrow, $24.99 (9780061717147). The first novel in a series sometimes gets off to a shaky start before finding its stride. That's the case with Dead Men's Dust, which introduces Joe...

Death Wore White.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Death Wore White. By Jim Kelly. June 2009. 400p. Minotaur, $24.95 (9780312570811). British writer Kelly, author of the Philip Dryden series, sets his latest psychological suspense tale along the wind-whipped Norfolk Coast during a...

Death's Door.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Death's Door. By Meryl Sawyer. May 2009. 384p. HQN, paper, $7.99 (9780373773749). A serial killer is stalking the children of one-time sperm donor Wyatt Holbrook, a multibillionaire pharmaceutical developer who is dying of a rare...

Diamonds in Disguise.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Diamonds in Disguise. By Tessa Barclay. June 2009. 224p. Severn, $28.95 (9780727867360). Even though Gregory Crowne's grandmother Nicolerta is no longer the queen of Hirtenstein, she still knows how to issue a command. So when...

Dismantled.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Dismantled. By Jennifer McMahon. June 2009. 432p. Harper, $24.99 (9780061689338). "Dismantlement equals freedom." "To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart." These are the credos of the Compassionate...

Against mysteries.(The Manley Arts)(Column)
May 1, 2009... Our burly and bearded cataloging professor looked up at us and exclaimed, "If you want to read a good mystery, you are in the right class!" He then held up a battered copy of the first edition of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. This is how my...

Floodgates.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... * Floodgates. By Mary Anna Evans. July 2009. 256p. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (9781590585917). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Archaeologist Faye Longchamp is taking a break from her doctoral studies to do some fieldwork in New Orleans. J I...

Down in the Flood.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Down in the Flood. By Kenneth Abel. Aug. 2009. 352p. Minotaur, $24.95 (9780312377199). Danny Chaisson is a New Orleans lawyer specializing in collections, wills, and real estate, but in the past, he's worked undercover to bring...

Embrace the Grim Reaper.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Embrace the Grim Reaper. By Judy Clemens. May 2009. 328p. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (9781590585894). Devastated by the deaths of her husband and infant son in a car crash that she alone survived, Casey Maldonado has taken to traveling,...

The Extra.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... The Extra. By Elizabeth Sims, June 2009. 400p. Minotaur, $24.95 (9780312377298). A skilled actress proves a keen amateur sleuth in the second entry (after The Actress, 2008) in Sims' newest mystery series. Divorced single morn...

Fake I.D.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Fake I.D. By Jason Starr. May 2009. 256p. Hard Case Crime, paper, $6.99 (9780843961188). Start revisits the territory of his Nothing Personal (2000), paring the story of a doomed gambler down to its most basic elements for a...

The Fate of Katherine Carr.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... The Fate of Katherine Carr. By Thomas H. Cook. June 2009. 288p. Houghton, $25 (9780151014019). Cook, the author of 21 novels, has been nominated for the Edgar seven times and won once (for The Chatham School Affair, 1996). His...

Unlocking the mystery of mysteries.(At Leisure)(Essay)
May 1, 2009... When I think about the mystery genre, my heart races, my breathing becomes shallow--I'm ill full panic mode. Why? Because of all the genres, mysteries seems to me the hardest to keep up with--there are so many new titles published every month,...

Covenant Hall.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Covenant Hall. By Kathryn R. Wall. May 2009. 320p. Minotaur, $24.95 (9780312375355). In her ninth adventure, Bay Tanner must locate the estranged sisters of her client. Joline Eastman. Joline's teenage daughter has leukemia, and...

Delhi Noir.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Delhi Noir. Ed. by Rirsh Sawhney. Aug. 2009. 326p. Akashic, paper, $15.95 (9781933354781). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The latest offering in Akashic's international noir series takes readers to the dangerous and alluring capital...

Diamondhead.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Diamondhead. By Patrick Robinson, May 2009. 400p. Vanguard, $25.95 (9781593155094). Navy SEAL Commander Mack Bedford watches in horror as a rogue missile (code named Diamondhead) takes out his team. After the attack, Bedford makes...

Dropped Dead Stitch.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Dropped Dead Stitch. By Maggie Sefton. June 2009. 288p. Berkley/Prime Crime, $24.95 (9780425227749). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Sefton's latest starts out strong when Colorado CPA Kelly Flynn learns her friend Jennifer has been...

Final Finesse.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Final Finesse. By Karna Small Bodman, May 2009. 336p. Forge, $26.95 (9780765358868). Bodman's third novel is a mixed bag. Samantha Reid works for Homeland Security, and when several natural-gas pipelines explode under mysterious...

Free Agent.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Free Agent. By Jeremy Duns. June 2009. 352p. Viking, $25.95 (9780670021017). Agent Paul Dark trails a double agent in this appealing debut. During World War II, Dark lost both the love of his life and his father during a secret...

Medusa.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Medusa. By Clive Cussler and Paul Kemprecos. June 2009. 448p. Putnam, $27.95 (9780399155659). Kurt Austin must stop a deadly virus from decimating the world in the latest NUMA Files novel. Research using a newly discovered...

Murder on a Midsummer Night.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Murder on a Midsummer Night. By Kerry Greenwood, July 2009. 268p. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (9781590586327). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It's 1929, and Phryne Fisher, the Australian flapper and private investigator, has a couple of...

River of Ghosts.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... River of Ghosts. By Peter Tonkin. June 2009. 224p. Severn, $28.95 (9780727867438). Seafaring shipowners Richard and Robin Mariner are back in another action-packed nautical thriller. This time they're testing the capabilities of a...

The Frightened Man.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... * The Frightened Man. By Kenneth Cameron. May 2009. 272p. Minotaur, $24.95 (9780312538965). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Cameron, who also writes military thrillers with his son under the name Gordon Kent, launches an impressive...

Fifty Grand.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Fifty Grand. By Adrian McKinty. May 2009. 320p. Holt, $25 (9780805089004). Changing direction from his celebrated Forsythe trilogy, starring an Irish immigrant who runs afoul of the New York Mob, McKinty offers a hard-edged noir...

Frozen Fire.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Frozen Fire. By Bill Evans and Marianna Jameson. June 2009. 368p. Forge, $24.95 (9780765320087). Ever wonder the result if Harold Robbins had written a disaster novel? Although Harold has gone on to take his place with Shakespeare...

The Glassblower of Murano.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... The Glassblower of Murano. By Marina Fiorato. June 2009. 368p. St. Martin's/Griffin. paper, $13.95 (9780312386986). Switching between modern-day and seventeenth-century Venice, Fiorato's novel is an intriguing mix of history,...

Hard Stop.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Hard Stop. By Chris Knopf. May 2009. 264p. Permanent Press, $28 (9781579621834). A brick to the head of ex-boxer, carpenter, and struggling PI Sam Acquillo does nothing to prevent him from turning the tables on the thug wielding...

Heart of the Assassin.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Heart of the Assassin. By Robert Ferrigno. Aug. 2009. 400p. Scribner, $25.95 (9781416537670). This is the culminating novel in Ferrigno's post-apocalyptic Assassin trilogy, following Prayers for the Assassin (2006) and Sins of the...

Hemingway Deadlights.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Hemingway Deadlights. By Michael Atkinson. Aug. 2009. 256p. Minotaur, $24.95 (9780312379711). It's odd that Ernest Hemingway is only now starring in a mystery novel. If Edna Ferber can become a fictional sleuth (in Edward...

Hogdoggin'.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Hogdoggin'. By Anthony Neil Smith. June 2009. 320p. Bleak House, $24.95 (9781606480243); paper, $14.95 (9781606480250). Dodging federal arrest warrants and his old nemesis (special FBI agent Franklin Rome), ex-rogue cop Billy...

In the Shadow of Gotham.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... In the Shadow of Gotham. By Stefanie Pietoff. May 2009, 368p. Minotaur, $24.95 (9780312544904). This historical mystery is the inaugural winner of a new competition for first crime novels sponsored by Minotaur Books and the...

Informed Consent.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Informed Consent. By Peter Turnbull. June 2009. 192p. Severn, $27.95 (9780727867513). A policeman stumbles on what appears to be a garbage bag on one of York's main streets, but on closer inspection, he discovers it's a man who...

Jump.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Jump. By Tim Maleeny. June 2009. 294p. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (9781590585740). When Ed Lowry, San Francisco's most despised landlord, falls to his death from the roof of one of his buildings, it is not at all hard to find suspects....

Killer Summer.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Killer Summer. By Ridley Pearson. June 2009. 384p. Putnam, $24.95 (9780399155727). Oenophiles may seem like a mellow lot, but there's nothing laid-back about the criminals who've descended upon Sun Valley, Idaho, during the...

Get Real.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... * Get Real. By Donald E. Westlake. July 2009. 288p. Grand Central, $23.99 (9780446178600). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The late, lamented Westlake was in top form with the fifteenth and final installment of this series of comic...

The Herring-Seller's Apprentice.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... * The Herring-Seller's Apprentice. By L. C. Tyler. May 2009. 224p. Felony & Mayhem, paper, $14.95 (9781934609231). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Between the cartoonlike cover and the strange title (a subtle allusion to red herrings),...

The King James Conspiracy.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... The King James Conspiracy. By Phillip DePoy. May 2009. 384p. St. Martin's, $25.95 (9780312377137). What if, in the original Hebrew gospels, there were secrets so shocking that revealing them could be disastrous for the Church of...

KnockOut.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... KnockOut. By Catherine Coulter. June 2009. 432p. Putnam, $26.95 (9780399155840). FBI agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock have their hands full when Savich is caught in a bank holdup near his Washington, D.C., home. The vicious...

The Last Ember.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... The Last Ember. By Daniel Levin. Aug. 2009. 320p. Riverhead, $25.95 (9781594488726). Levin's religious and archaeological thriller has all the elements needed to appeal to Da Vinci Code fans: long-buried secrets, hidden puzzles...

The Last Llanelli Train.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... The Last Llanelli Train. By Robert Lewis. June 2009. 224p. Serpent's Tail, paper, $14.95 (9781852428907). So you think you're a noir connoisseur, perfectly comfortable with the idea that life starts out bad and gets worse. Well,...

Leaden Skies.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Leaden Skies. By Ann Parker. July 2009. 298p. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (9781590585771). Ann Parker's intrepid saloon keeper Inez Stannert (Iron Ties, 2006) is still carrying on a secret affair with the Reverend Justice B. Sands in...

Little Lamb Lost.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Little Lamb Lost. By Margaret Fenton. June 2009. 264p. Oceanview, $24.95 (9781933515519). When two-year-old Michael Hennessey dies from a suspicious drug overdose, with his ex-addict single mother, Ashley, a client of the...

House Secrets.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... House Secrets. By Mike Lawson. July 2009. 384p. Atlantic Monthly, $22 (9780802118851). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Lawson's latest Joe DeMarco thriller proves to be his best yet. DeMarco works as a "fixer" for the Speaker of the...

Londongrad.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Londongrad. By Reggie Nadelson. July 2009. 400p. Walker, $25 (9780802717528). New York police detective and Russian immigrant Artie Cohen is looking forward to a week's vacation (crime-novel heroes should know better than to take...

Lonesome Point.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Lonesome Point. By Ian Vasquez. June 2009. 268p. Minotaur, $24.95 (9780312378103). Moving beyond the conventions of the hard-boiled detective story, which he put to such good use in his debut, In the Heat (2008), Vasquez delivers...

Lyrics for the Blues.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Lyrics for the Blues. By Gar Anthony Haywood. July 2009. 150p. illus. A.S.A.P., $28 (9781892011466). Haywood's Aaron Gunner series (1988-2000) had strong reviews but so-so sales; the author's attempt to reinvent himself as Ray...

Huge.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... * Huge. By James W. Fuerst. June 2009. 320p. Crown, $23.95 (9780307452498). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For God's sake, don't call him "Genie". The name is "Huge," or so Eugene Smalls insists. But folks persist in applying the...

Jelly's Gold.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... * Jelly's Gold. By David Housewright. June 2009. 288p. Minotaur, $24.95 (9780312370824). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] St. Paul, Minnesota, was a haven for Prohibition-era gangsters--authorities at that time gave all kinds of...

The Magician's Death.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... The Magician's Death. By P. C. Doherty. July 2009. 288p. Minotaur, $24.99 (9780312565626). Sir Hugh Corbett, the keeper of the king's secret seal, returns in a suspenseful, medieval-style Da Vinci Code (2003), appropriately...

Mama Rides Shotgun.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... Mama Rides Shotgun. By Deborah Sharp. July 2009. 336p. Midnight Ink, paper, $14.95 (9780738713304). Mama Rosalee and middle daughter Mace are on the Florida Cracker Trail for the annual six-day commemorative horse ride across tire...

The Master Plan.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2009... The Master Plan. By Carol Costa. June 2009. 272p. Avalon, $23.95 (9780803499591). Dana Sloan's little investigation firm is on overdrive when two men end up dead in Dana's quiet but growing Chicago suburb. One of the men is...