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By Nico Vreeland, on March 25th, 2010 [2010 Edgar Award nominee for Best First Novel By An American Author---see reviews of other 2010 Edgar noms here.]
 Author: Bryan Gruley
Touchstone, 2009
Filed under: Mystery
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
When pieces of a snowmobile wash up on the shores of Starvation Lake—near the small town of the same name—a ten-year-old accident involving the town’s famed hockey coach is reconsidered, and the history of Starvation Lake is drastically rewritten.
Gruley does best at character work; he captures the feeling of life in a small town and he sets up layers of history that blend together well. He’s not so good at plotting: the first half of Starvation plods along sedately, and Gruley doesn’t unleash any plot twists until the final 50 pages, when he dumps them all in your lap.
But while Starvation is lopsided plot-wise, it’s ultimately a satisfying mystery. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on March 16th, 2010 [2010 Edgar Award nominee for Best Novel---see reviews of other 2010 Edgar noms here.]
 Author: John Hart
Minotaur, 2009
Filed under: Mystery
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
5 |
The Last Child follows 13-year-old Johnny Merrimon on his unceasing quest to find out what happened to his twin sister, Alyssa, who disappeared one year before the novel begins. Since her disappearance, Johnny’s life has taken a sharp downturn: his father left and his mother has taken up with an evil new lover.
The narrative switches between Johnny and Detective Clyde Hunt, who was assigned to Alyssa’s case and never solved it. Hunt still feels responsible for Alyssa’s disappearance and the wretched state of Johnny’s life, and he does all he can to protect Johnny and his mother.
Despite underwhelming prose and a few hiccups along the way, Child is a ferociously compelling mystery, full of suspense and tension. Of the five Edgar books I’ve read so far, Child is by far the best.
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By Nico Vreeland, on March 12th, 2010 [2010 Edgar Award nominee for Best First Novel By An American Author---see reviews of other 2010 Edgar noms here.]
 Author: Attica Locke
Harper, 2009
Filed under: Mystery
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
5 |
| Entertainment..... |
3 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
Black Water Rising is a novel with two frustratingly unconnected story lines that are given almost equal weight. The primary narrative concerns a young black lawyer named Jay trying to carve out a law practice in early ’80s Houston. He and his wife go for a low-rent swamp cruise on their anniversary, they witness a crime, and they try to help a young woman running from a gunman. They drop her off at the police station and eventually a mystery unfurls.
The secondary narrative, interspersed with the first, is about Jay’s history with the SNCC (pronounced “snik”), a civil rights group in the ’60s that eventually split between proponents of nonviolent action, and Black Power-type followers of Stokely Carmichael.
One big problem with Rising is that these two discrete story lines have almost nothing to do with each other. The other, bigger problem, is that both are quite boring. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on March 2nd, 2010 [2010 Edgar Award nominee for Best First Novel By An American Author---see reviews of other 2010 Edgar noms here.]
 Author: Heather Gudenkauf
Mira, 2009
Filed under: Literary, Mystery
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
5 |
The Weight of Silence follows a relatively simple mystery, at the center of which is seven-year-old Calli Clark, who hasn’t spoken in three years. When Calli’s father drunkenly grabs her and drags her into the woods early one morning, the entire town sets about trying to figure out what happened to her (and her friend, Petra, who also wandered off that morning).
Most of the book deals with the people in Calli’s and Petra’s lives, and the relationships between them, as they appear in the light of crisis. When Gudenkauf tries to formulate a plot, though, it works for a little while, but eventually fizzles out in a two-fold ending full of underwhelming misdirection.
Silence features some phenomenal suspense and some engaging characters, but the actual mystery is lackluster. Most of the time it’s a real nail-biter of a book, even if all you wind up with is ragged nails.
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By Nico Vreeland, on February 16th, 2010 [2010 Edgar Award nominee for Best Novel] — I’m reading all the Edgar nominees in the top two categories (Best Novel, Best First Novel By An American Author), and handicapping the choices before the winners are announced in late April. You can track all my reviews of Edgar nominees here.
 Author: Charlie Huston
Ballantine Book, 2009
Filed under: Mystery
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
5 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
4 |
After I finished Mystic Arts, I was shocked to discover that it was Huston’s ninth novel, and not his first. It reads like a talented but inexperienced student wrote it; it bears almost every sign and symptom of a juvenile writer’s work. That’s not all bad: while Huston is guilty of simplicity of plot and character (especially emotional simplicity), he also charges the novel with exuberance and passion.
While Mystic Arts isn’t exactly well written, it offers stylish fun, snappy prose, and a flair for the fascinatingly gruesome. It’s a quick-reading, simplistic yarn that primarily wants to entertain you—a goal that’s all too rare these days. And it succeeds, at least until the final act, when the plot finally unravels and leaves the reader in the lurch.
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Author: Bryan Gruley
