What We're Reading

INGRID THOFT

It’s Monday, the beginning of the week here at Jungle Reds, but I wanted to start the week with a coda of sorts.  Last week, we talked about “What We’re Writing,” and now it only seems fitting to share “What We’re Reading.”

I’m proud to admit that I’m in the middle of an Ann Cleeves binge. I am reading all of the Vera Stanhope books, not even in order, just when I can get my hands on them.  Even though I’ve watched the first few seasons of the TV show, I’m still completely enthralled with the books, and I’m consuming them like a box of Wheat Thins, and you know I’m a slave to Wheat Thins.  The main draw, of course, is Vera, but the supporting characters are three dimensional, and the plots are air tight.  I can’t get enough of Vera! 

Ann Cleeves in Shetland.

Another book that I’ve just started—I tend to read more than one at a time—is called Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes.  The authors, Richard A. Clarke and R.P. Eddy, both have had distinguished careers in the fields of counter terrorism and intelligence, and they argue that disasters can be prevented, if only we learn to listen to the early warnings given by outliers.  Cassandra, in Greek mythology, was able to foresee calamities, but the gods cursed her so that her warnings of impending doom were ignored.  According to Clarke and Eddy, catastrophes like Katrina and the rise of ISIS were predicted by some, but their warnings were listened to by few.  Warnings examines how we can start paying attention to the Cassandras in our midst.


So, what are the rest of you reading when you’re not writing?

JENN MCKINLAY: Ingrid, I love the Vera Stanhope books but as an avid knitter, I love Ann Cleeves's Shetland Island Series with D.I. Jimmy Perez even more. I have a fascination with the Shetland Islands (home of Fair Isle knitting) and read everything I can get my hands on about the area. There was even an article in my Vogue Knitting (Holiday 2016) talking with Ms. Cleeves about the Shetland Isles. She attended Left Coast Crime here in Phoenix and she is delightful. Anyway -- sorry, I went all fan girl there for a moment -- I am currently reading Sherry Thomas's A Conspiracy in Belgravia, having just finished her A Study in Scarlet Women, which are the first two titles in her Lady Sherlock series. I am so enjoying her reworking of Sherlock (Charlotte) Holmes as a brilliant, titled, independent lady who is too clever and a bit socially awkward for her own good.

IPT: Jenn, don't even get me started on Jimmy Perez!  I would consider moving to the Shetland Islands just to listen to him read the phone book in that Scottish accent!

HALLIE EPHRON: I'm reading an advance copy of Jessica Keener's Strangers in Budapest, and it's making me think about what it would be like to move with your family to somewhere utterly alien. And I've got lined up, books by Mary Kubica (Pretty Baby) and Sara Blaedel (The Lost Woman) who blew me away at Book Passage last week, talking about how they write.

RHYS BOWEN: I'm another big fan of Ann Cleves and the Vera books. And the Shetland novels too. I've never been to Shetland but it's on my to-do list. My reading at the moment seems to be one book to blurb after another. I think I've become the go-to historical novel quotation endorsement person, and it's hard to say no when the request comes from publishers and also people like Lee Child and Louise Penny and our own Jungle Reds have taken the time to read my books. Since the books won't come out for many months yet, I don't think I should mention names as titles could change. Next on my must read instantly pile is Louise's new book, Glass Houses, which I plan to take with me when I escape for a few days to Monterrey next weekend.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: When I left for London, I was a third of the way through the new Ann Cleeves Vera Stanhope novel, The Seagull. Well, I wasn't going to lug a hardcover with me, so I had to buy it on Kindle to finish it!! (And it's really good!) I also left behind new hardcover copies of Louise Penny's Glass Houses, and Peter Robinson's Sleeping in the Ground, but I may have to wait until I get back to read those. In the meantime, there's a new Nick Dixon novel by Damien Boyd loaded on my Kindle so that's what I'm diving into. (These are British procedural novels, set in west Somerset. They are only available on Kindle but I've really enjoyed them.)  After that, who know what might call to me from a London book store??

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I just powered through Louise Penny's A Great Reckoning, and I have to say I adored it. Megan Miranda's The Perfect Stranger kept me totally guessing, and every time I thought--oh, I know what'll happen, it didn't. One of the great joys of my life is interviewing/introducing authors, so I have to (get to!) read their books to prepare, so I just read Tess Gerritsen's  I Know A Secret and Craig Johnson's  The Golden West. Such proof of how much voice matters---two completely different books, and I adored both of them. Yes, blurbing--I agree it's hilarious how that commands reading decisions.  But I count my blessings every time--such a treat! Next to read: Candice Fox's Crimson Lake.  But my current night stand book is You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott. Absolutely chilling. And cannot wait for the new Mary Kubica.

LUCY BURDETTE: I love it when I can report a run of wonderful books, and this happened over the past 10 days. First I read Chime and Punishment, the third in Julianne Holmes's Clock Shop mystery series. She has a wonderfully rounded character (which is what I care most about it) and a fascinating setting in this small town clock shop. Next I read The Golden Son by Shilpi Somaya Gowda, a big sweeping novel  about an Indian man who comes to the US to study medicine. A fascinating clash of cultures.

And finally, Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. I cannot even tell you how much I loved this book. Don't want to say too much about it because I hope you'll be as surprised as I was about the twist in the plot (it's not a mystery, it's a family psychological story.) Gorgeous writing and quirky characters and a compelling plot. What more does a reader need? And on my nightstand sits Keziah Frost's debut novel The Reluctant Fortune Teller. This book reminds me of early novels by Elinor Lipman (a very good thing!) and is chock-full of interesting characters and psychological insights. You'll be hearing more from her!

IPT: I love Elinor Lipman so I need to add Keziah Frost to my TBR pile ASAP!

So tell us, what are you reading these days?

Hallie recommends... summer crime

HALLIE EPHRON: It's REDS ON WRITING week again... and I get to lead off.

A few months ago, just after I turned in the first draft of You'll Never Know, Dear (I'm deep into revising it now), I got a auspiciously timed request from the Boston Globe to put together a list of crime novels for summer reading. Reading other people's books is a great way NOT to obsess about the hot mess that you just turned in.

Since I no longer write a regular book review column, this required some quick research and reaching out to publishers for books. In the course of about six weeks I powered through about thirty books to find summer reads to recommend. The photo shows the tip of the iceberg.

Here's my list. There's something for everyone in here...
 

“Charcoal Joe’’ Walter Mosley (Doubleday)

Flush with cash but bereft of his main squeeze, Easy Rawlins is on the prowl again as he tries to keep a young black physics prodigy from going down for murder and ends up hip-deep in ill-gotten gains.

“Collecting the Dead’’ Spencer Kope (Minotaur)

A heart-thumping yarn from a real-life crime analyst, this features an FBI tracker with preternatural ability to “see the hidden.” He hunts down a serial killer who leaves a frowny face near each of his victims.

“Guilty Minds” by Joseph Finder (Dutton)

Nick Heller, the quintessential PI with a heart of gold, debunks scurrilous lies about the Supreme Court’s chief justice, then tries to rescue the woman who made those claims. Suspenseful, surprising, and humane.

“The Murder of Mary Russell: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes’’ Laurie R. King (Bantam)

The very title stirs dread in the hearts of fans of Sherlock Holmes’s young wife in this pastiche series. Mrs. Hudson stars (her nefarious past catches up with her), and she manages to surprise Holmes.

“Murder on the Quai’’ Cara Black (Soho)

The Berlin wall is crumbling, and in a series prequel, Parisian medical student Aimêe Leduc finds her mêtier, detecting. She investigates the murders of old men and tries to find her mother, a reputed terrorist.

“Orphan X” by Greg Hurwitz (Minotaur)

In this perfect fix for paranoid adrenaline junkies, an orphan (a perverted version of young King Arthur) is recruited and trained as a professional assassin for the government. Soon he’s surrounded by assassins.

 “The Second Life of Nick Mason’’ Steve Hamilton (Putnam)

After serving five years of a 25-year term in maximum security, Nick strikes a Faustian bargain with a criminal mastermind. He’s out of prison, living in luxury, falling in love, but dancing to the devil’s tune.

 “Wilde Lake’’ Laura Lippman (Morrow)

Family secrets rain down like a plague of locusts on “Lu” Brant, Maryland’s first woman state’s attorney. The young widow and mother of twins prosecutes a case that strikes close to home, threatening to taint her revered father’s reputation.

“Where All the Light Tends” to Go by David Joy (Putnam)

The son of a man who places a pocket bible on the chest of every person he murders realizes he’s in danger of becoming his father. This deeply noir finalist for the Edgar Award best first novel is set in Appalachia.

“You Will Know Me” by Megan Abbott (Hachette)

Overcoming a freak accident that mutilated her foot, Devon Knox becomes a gymnastics prodigy. Her parents double down to protect her when her coach is murdered. Abbott is brilliant at dissecting the power of adolescent girls.

BONUS: Here are two more that they wouldn't allow me to pick because of the obvious conflict of interest, the REDS own:

“Crowned and Dangerous” by Rhys Bowen (Berkeley)

Lady Georgie is about to elope with Darcy! Throwing caution to the wind, nothing can deter… until the news that her future father-in-law has been arrested for murder.

 

“Air Time” by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge)

Back in print! TV reporter Charlotte McNally enters the world of high fashion, only to discover that the purses are fake but the danger is real. She goes undercover to bring the couture counterfeiters to justice and struggles to answer a life-changing question from a certain handsome professor.

What are you reading this summer?

Captain, My Captain, a guest blog by Megan Abbott

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Thrillers are books involving two-fisted he-men saving the world (and a few women at the same time) right?  Well, sure, if you're Clive Cussler. Not to diss Dirk, but here on Jungle Red Writers, we like smart, subtle crime fiction that keeps us awake at night while slicing us with human insight and razor-fine writing. In other words, we like Megan Abbott.

Megan is an Edgar-Award-winning (and everything-else-nominated)  author whose fiction routinely makes it onto Best Book of the Year Lists. Whether she's writing neo-noir novels like Die A Little and Bury Me Deep, or intensely literary psychological thrillers, like The End of Everything or the upcoming Dare Me, Megan puts women's lives and their relationships with one another at the center of her work. Today, she's going to shed some personal light on the relationship between mentor and  protegee; teacher and student.

 

When I was in eighth grade, I was obsessed with the movie The Breakfast Club, which seemed to speak to my life in deep, resonant ways. I must have conveyed these feelings with great intensity to my beloved Advanced English teacher, Mrs. B, because somehow it came to pass that she spent one of her Sunday afternoons taking me to see the movie with her—a first viewing for her, a second for me. (It was rated R, so this was a particular coup).

I remember the experience powerfully, remember feeling so flattered by all of it. I guess I’ll never know what made her suggest it. It was not something I’d ever heard of any other teacher doing for a student. It stuck with me. It felt like I had been singled out, was special.

A few years later, while absorbed in all the mysteries and terrors of high school (far more harrowing than The Breakfast Club had warned), I learned that Mrs. B had died from breast cancer. It turned out she had been sick for several years, including when I was in her class, when we went to the movies that day. It seemed impossible—she was very young (my mom tells me now that she was only in her late thirties)—and unspeakably sad.

I vividly remember my parents telling me the news because it was during that same conversation that my dad confided that Mrs. B’s husband had died a few years before. “She’d been unhappy,” he said, probably trying to make me feel better, “for a long time.”

The surprise I felt was acute. Mrs. B was unhappy? I’d never really thought about teachers being unhappy. About grown women’s unhappiness. And I certainly never imagined any of their private struggles. Mrs. B was cool, lively, loved books and paid attention to me. That was all I’d cared about, apparently. What an awful feeling, to realize how self-absorbed you were, or are.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Mrs. B. My novel, Dare Me, is in large part about the complexities of female mentor-protégée relationship and I guess I’ve been trying to figure out why that subject has always interested me so much, even as far back as age eleven, when I was enraptured by Lois Duncan’s Daughters of Eve (a book whose twisty attitudes towards feminism you could spend a lifetime unraveling), and leading up to Dare Me, which centers on a high school cheerleading squad and their charismatic new coach

All the girls in Dare Me are fascinated by Coach, especially the main character, Addy, who idolizes her. “She was the one who showed me all the dark wonders of life,” says Addy. “Did I ever feel anything at all until she showed me what feeling meant? Pushing at the corners of her cramped world with curled fists, the fists of a little girl, she showed me what it meant to live.”

To Addy, Coach, who is young and pretty but also demanding and aloof, is a mystery she wants to unlock. She wants to be like her, wants to be her. It’s a powerful yearning, almost like a crush—maybe stronger because it’s safer. You never think you’ll get your heart broken. And you never, ever really know her life.

At age 12 or 13, I was too young (at least in the ways that matter) to think of Mrs. B as anything other than this person who gave me books, who encouraged me, who took me to see The Breakfast Club that time. There’s an inherent selfishness, greediness of the protégée, which is, I guess, about being young. Everything is about you: she’s taking me to the movies, she’s interested in me, me, me. And I never thought twice about what her life might really be like, her pains and sorrows and heartache.

But these mentors, they matter so much, don’t they? It’s the way we figure out ourselves, by imagining their lives, imagining ourselves in their lives. And then, eventually, realizing that their lives are not what we pictured, that life isn’t.

A painful revelation, usually. Because it’s one of the moments you first realize how complicated life is, how hard. But we need those moments, like we need these women (and they need us, they need to see us believing in them). It’s how we become ourselves. 

Tell us about your mentor-protegee relationship, and you may be one of two lucky commenters to win an Advance Readers Copy of Dare Me!

You can find out more about Megan Abbott and read excerpts of her books at her website. She also blogs with Sara Gran at the Abbott Gran Old Tyme Medicine Show. You can friend her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter as @MeganEAbbott.