Review by New York Times Review
SOME STORIES ARE so sad, you want them to have the comfort of a gentle storytelling voice. Tom Bouman extends that kindness in DRY BONES IN THE VALLEY (Norton, $24.95), his beautifully written first novel set in the mountainous region of northeastern Pennsylvania that sits atop the Marcellus Shale, a vast geological treasure, prized and exploited for its natural gas resources. With neighbors feuding over whether to lease drilling rights to companies accused of poisoning the environment, it's no wonder that a crazy old recluse like Aubrey Dunigan would be testy with anyone he finds hanging around his decrepit farm. But these hills are also overrun with meth cookers, dope dealers and Mexican drug cartels. So just because a stranger is found dead on his property doesn't make poor old Aubrey a murderer. Officer Henry Farrell is one of those stoic heroes who see what's in front of their eyes but refuse to let it break their hearts. He plays the fiddle on Tuesday nights with friends who can pick out old bluegrass tunes. He hunts deer and keeps his gun clean, although he can't help feeling bad that the woods are "full of junk," strewn with the detritus of thoughtlessly lived lives. The broader story Bouman tells is more disheartening than the murder story. It's about a hopeless generation of rural Americans who no longer work their own land - if they have any land left and if they have any work at all. Suspicious people living with guard dogs in trailers and abandoned school buses, they're so filled with blind hatred for any kind of authority that they can't see the ground opening up under their feet. WHERE DO THEY go, all those memories that are lost when a mind begins to fail? And who has the courage to set off in search of them? Maud Horsham, the narrator of Emma Healey's spellbinding first novel, ELIZABETH IS MISSING (Harper, $25.99), is aware that she's slipping into dementia. So she depends on the handwritten notes she calls "my paper memory" to remind herself not to buy any more canned peaches or try to cook. She must also remember to look for her best friend, who has disappeared and may be dead, possibly murdered. "I can see they won't listen, won't take me seriously," Maud says of her daughter and the various caretakers who dismiss her concerns. "So I must do something. I must, because Elizabeth is missing." Maud makes her way to Elizabeth's eerily empty house, to the church Elizabeth no longer attends, to the charity shop where they met as volunteer workers and to the local police station, where she's rudely patronized by the same officer who brushed her aside on previous visits. Healey's narrative takes its structure from the shifting patterns of Maud's thoughts, pursuing what appear to be random images back to postwar Britain, when her sister left her husband and simply vanished. No one in authority paid much attention to that either, not when so many wives were running away from hasty war marriages that the newspapers tried to reach them with public pleas. In Maud's deteriorating mind, the two mysteries become so entwined that a fresh clue can dislodge associations from the past yet also make sense in the present. It's a sad and lonely business, watching your identity slowly slip away. But even at the end, Maud insists on making herself heard and understood. WITH CAMPUS VIOLENCE now embedded in our social culture, the classic academic mystery could use an overhaul. Lori Rader-Day gives it the old college try in THE BLACK HOUR (Seventh Street Books, paper, $15.95) by putting familiar genre conventions (the killer on campus, the faculty member as amateur detective, the back-stabbing at the president's reception) in a more realistic context. Amelia Emmet, the sociology professor playing sleuth, not only teaches the "Sociology of Deviance and Crime" but was also the victim of a campus shooting, a crime the teaching assistant with whom she shares the narrative is secretly researching. The traditional whodunit procedures feel so contrived that the background material makes better reading, offering insights into the operation of a student-run suicide hotline and debunking the old myth that someone whose roommate commits suicide automatically gets a single room - without charge - the following semester. ANTONIO HILL'S first novel, "The Summer of Dead Toys," introduced Inspector Héctor Salgado, a temperamental detective with the Catalan police force. Contemptuous of the conformity, hypocrisy and decadence he finds in Barcelona, his adopted city, this moody Argentine lives by the philosophy of his native country's dance. ("As the tangos say, life isn't fair. I pity anyone who thinks otherwise.") Salgado's cynicism runs deeper and darker in THE GOOD SUICIDES (Crown, $26), which presents him with an extraordinary case. After being warned with a cryptic message attached to a photo of three hanged dogs, the senior executives of a successful cosmetics firm begin killing themselves in gruesome ways. The macabre premise is a shocker, but Salgado is the real surprise: a tough cop with the sensitivity to be distressed that no absolution has been granted to these unfortunate men. There are "no good or bad suicides," he glumly acknowledges. "Taking one's own life was the ultimate sin. But if we don't even have that, what is left to us?"
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 6, 2014]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* After 10 months spent recovering from a gunshot wound, sociology professor Amelia Emmet returns to the classroom, delivering lectures on her now disturbingly familiar specialty: the sociology of violence. But Amelia's welcomes are laced with an undercurrent of suspicion about her role in the shooting. How could the shooter, a troubled student who committed suicide at the scene, have been a stranger to her? The truth is, Amelia doesn't know. Nathaniel, a new graduate student hoping to share Amelia's dark area of study, snags his dream job as her graduate assistant. Amelia's erratic behavior and battle to manage her pain make her a challenging boss, but he's dedicated to her, especially since he secretly plans to study her shooting for his graduate thesis. Separately, Amelia and Nathan seek answers about her attacker's motivation, goaded along by Rory McDaniel, a newspaper reporter. This accomplished debut bears favorable comparison to the work of Gillian Flynn (more Sharp Objects than Gone Girl), Cornelia Read, and S. J. Watson. Chicago writing instructor Rader-Day ably manipulates the elements that constitute academia's dark side (competition, campus politics, quests for identity, and, of course, sex) without the overlong academic digressions these settings sometimes court. Amelia Emmet is a sympathetic, yet jaded and darkly witty main character. An unputdownable read.--Tran, Christine Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Sociology professor Amelia Emmet, the heroine of Rader-Day's exceptional debut, returns to Rothbert University, near Chicago, 10 months after a student shot her and killed himself. Struggling with physical and mental problems caused by her injuries, Amelia is equally aware of irony: she's a scholar of violence in society, yet has no idea why she was attacked, had no acquaintance with the perpetrator, and only the sketchiest of memories of the incident. Nathaniel "Nath" Barber, her teaching assistant and student of Chicago's gangland past, is eager to investigate and soon links the shooter with associates of Rothbert's suicide hotline. Meanwhile, a reporter seems too conveniently at hand when trouble arises, an eccentric array of campus colleagues are inclined to blame the victim, and a scion of Rothbert's founder may have taken entitlement to a new extreme. Chapters that alternate between Amelia and Nath's viewpoints provide an irresistible combination of menace, betrayal, and self-discovery. Agent: Sarah Bowers, Miller Bowers Griffin Literary Management. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Chicago's Rothbert University was rocked when one of its sociology professors, -Amelia Emmet, was shot randomly; the student attacker committed suicide immediately after. End of story. Readers enter as Amelia returns to teaching months later, determined to take ownership of her own mystery case. Teaching assistant Nathaniel Barber is protective, but covertly he wonders if Amelia might become his dissertation topic. A newspaper reporter has pursued her story since day one, and he hovers too closely for comfort. Finally, there is the suicide hotline staff who seem extra-zealous. All of these behaviors create an air of paranoia. Not until Amelia's memory begins to loosen does she realize that danger has not left the campus. A seriously scary sailing regatta on Lake Michigan brings it all home, vividly! -VERDICT With disconcerting timeliness (in the wake of recent shootings), Rader-Day captures the more sinister aspects of campus life. While the author captivates from page one with her psychologically attuned debut, it is the sociological frames that work so well: class, power, and violence. This reviewer was bowled over by the novel's alternating points of view, superb storytelling, and pitch-perfect take on academia. [A July LibraryReads pick, see p. 119.-Ed.] (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
