The Woods by Harlan Coben -- A Reader's Review

Twenty years ago, four teenagers away at summer camps went into the woods at night. Two were discovered murdered and placed in shallow graves. The other two were never found. The incident changed the lives the families, the owner of the camp and his family, and the two teens that were also in the woods that night, seeking romance, not death.

Twenty Years Later

Today, those two teens are Paul Copeland, the Essex County (New Jersey) prosecutor, a widower, and the father of six-year-old Cara, and Lucy Gold, a never-married English professor at a nearby college. Copeland's sister is one of the missing teens and Lucy's father owned the camp where the murders occurred. They have never talked since that fateful night, but now new evidence has surfaced -- curiously at the same time to both Lucy and "Cope."

A Rape Trial

Copeland is in the middle of a high profile rape trial. Chamique Johnson, a 16-year old "exotic dancer," has accused two fraternity boys from wealthy families of raping her at a frat house party. "Cope" believes the girl, who has nothing to gain except justice by filing the charges. At first the case seems straight forward, but the defendants' high-priced legal team has some surprises for the prosecutor.

New Information

As Copeland tries to win justice for Chamique Johnson, he is visited by two Manhattan homicide detectives. It seems a murder victim was found with a stack of clippings and other information about the killings twenty years earlier. When "Cope" is asked to view the body, he thinks he may know who the victim is, but how can that be true after all of these years?

A Lost Love

As "Cope" and Lucy work to make sense of everything that's happening, they are forced to acknowledge the electricity that still exists between them. Will they be able to forget the intervening years or has the past become too big an obstacle for them?

The Woods has received mixed reviews in the major media, with many claiming that there are too many implausible situations in the plot. To me, the characters needed more definition. Coben does a lot more "telling" than "showing" about his main characters. However, I found the action to be compelling -- one of those novels that will keep you up well into the night. For that reason, I'd recommend picking it up -- especially as a beach or vacation read.

About Harlan Coben

Harlan Coben is the first mystery writer to win all three of the Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony awards. Best known for his Myron Bolitar series, Coben is the author of 26 mystery novels, the most recent of which is Missing You, released in the US in 2014. Coben was born in Newark, New Jersey and graduated from Amherst College. He now lives in New Jersey with his wife, a pediatrician, and their four children.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell -- A Reader's Review

I'm currently reading "The Bone Clocks," the latest David Mitchell novel, so I thought I'd share my review of his previous novel, "Cloud Atlas" that I originally published on Suite 101...

Cloud Atlas is a masterful series of six inter-related tales that span generations and continents to illustrate the basic human condition. Cloud Atlas is not a mystery in the traditional "who dunnit" sense. Rather it is a puzzle--a set of inter-related, cleverly-told stories that point out the similarities and inevitabilities of human nature. It's a brilliantly crafted novel, one that belongs in any serious reader's library.

Adam Ewing

The first tale is related in a set of journal entries by a 19th century California notary on his way home from a trek to the South Seas to find the beneficiary of a will. En route, he is marooned on an island for a week while his ship makes repairs and meets and befriends an English doctor as well as a native man.

Robert Frobisher

The tale of Robert Frobisher, ne'er-do-well musical student in the 1930s, is related in a set of letters from Frobisher to his friend Sixsmith. Frobisher, disowned by his family, expelled from the university, and hounded by creditors, decides to hide in Belgium for some months as the musical aide to an aging and ailing composer. His offer is accepted and he becomes intertwined with the household's customs and eccentricities.

Luisa Rey

"Half Lives: Luisa Rey" is structured as a pulp mystery. On the surface it is a tale of corporate greed, intrigue, and excess. Underneath, it reinforces the author's theme of the continuity and the inevitability of life. In this tale, set in 1980s California, we again meet Sixsmith from the previous chapter, who is now a well-regarded physicist in his 70s.

Timothy Cavendish

Fast-forwarding to present-day English, we meet Timothy Cavendish, a vanity book publisher, harassed by his ex-wife, relatives, and creditors. The story of his trials becomes the basis for a screenplay.

Sonmi-451

Moving into the future, David Mitchell takes up where George Orwell and Aldous Huxley left off. His future is one run by corporations, where clones (fabricants), such as Sonmi-451, are constructed to perform service jobs, where all-seeing "Eyes" which citizens from regular vantage points, and where each citizen has a spending quota to fill each month. It's a bleak world, but one not too difficult to imagine.

After the Apocalypse

The final scenario takes up to Mitchell's view of the world following a nuclear war. Societies, language, and skills are primitive and various pockets of survivors vie for the world's limited resources. It's an eerie look at what might be our future.

This clever novel is structured so that the reader samples each of these tales before learning of the ending. That strings from each story appear in the next is an intriguing way to tie them all together and to dismiss the differences of time and place.

Cloud Atlas was shortlisted for Britain's Booker Prize in 2004 and it's easy to see why it was selected. No word here is selected at random, even the created ones. All words add to the tone, the mood, and the ultimate story of this novel. It you haven't read Cloud Atlas, pick up a copy. It's that rare novel that entertains while imparting a profound message.

About David Mitchell

David Mitchell is a British writer, the author of six novels, two of which have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His most recent work, The Bone Clocks was just published in September, 2014. After years in Japan, he now lives in Cork, Ireland with his wife and two children. (David Mitchell is no relation to this reviewer.)

Make Ahead Bread by Donna Currie

I don't usually review cookbooks here, but this one is such a winner, I just had to share. Make Ahead Bread: 100 Recipes for Bake-It-When-You-Want-It Yeast Breads by Donna Currie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book could make a baker out of me! Just in time for the holidays, Donna Currie and Taunton Press have released this beautiful, fun-to-read primer on making yeast breads. Take it from someone who had given up trying to bake this type of bread; Ms. Currie makes the recipes easy to understand and follow. I tried the three cheese bread with Kalamata olives and can't wait to get started on the other 99 recipes.

However, you don't have to be a chef or a cooking enthusiast to enjoy this book, just a fan of good food. The color photographs will leave your mouth watering. This book is also a good resource for those looking for alternative to additive-laden grocery store breads.

(Disclosure: I received a complimentary ARC from the publisher.)

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Saturday by Ian McEwan--A Reader's Review

It is the ultimate test of a fiction writer to chronicle, in a novel, the events of a single day in one person's life. Virginia Woolf does it beautifully in her novel Mrs. Dalloway. So, too, does British, Booker prize-winning novelist, Ian McEwan, in his most recent work Saturday.

Beginning with his awakening before dawn with a vague feeling of foreboding Saturday takes the reader through the day of Henry Perowne, a middle-class, British neurosurgeon, husband, and father of two adult children.

We're given a glimpse into the ordinary (a chat with his son, a squash game, and his dinner preparation) and the extraordinary (a view from his bedroom window of an airliner's emergency descent over the rooftops of London, and a chance meeting with a mentally handicapped young man).

The gentle crescendo builds as we anticipate the family's late afternoon arrival at the Perowne's upscale London townhouse. Daughter Daisy, a poet, is back from school in Paris; father-in-law, Grammaticus, also a poet, is visiting from his self-imposed exile in France; son, Theo, is fresh from a blues guitar gig; and wife, Rosalind, a lawyer, is just out of court.

The day ends in conflict and a grave, moving, and hopeful resolution. This is a novel about human flaws and our struggle against them. Is Henry right in choosing the science of his profession over the art of his daughter and father-in-law? Is he right to "fix' patients brains when he can't "fix" their minds?

More introspective and cerebral than his previous novel, Atonement, Ian McEwan's Saturday is the right mix of self-discovery and current events. It is a novel that will leave you pondering the conflicts and resolutions of your own life.

"The Lost Empress" by Steve Robinson--A Reader's Review

The Lost Empress by Steve Robinson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you enjoy historical fiction and mystery novels, this is a series to check out. "The Lost Empress" is the fourth in the Jefferson Tayte series by Steve Robinson. Tayte, an American genealogist who dabbles in crime solving, is drawn to England to see if a client's grandmother and a woman supposedly lost when the ocean liner, "The Empress of Ireland" sank in 1914 were the same woman.

The ship really existed and sank in the St. Lawrence River on its way from Quebec City to Liverpool on May 29, 1914. More than 1,000 people were killed in the accident, the largest maritime loss in Canada during peacetime.

Against this historical background, the fictional story emerges with plenty of history, manor houses and plot twists to keep the reader engrossed. I'll be seeking out the rest of the books in this series.

(Disclosure: I received a complimentary ARC via NetGalley.)

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Kindle Unlimited Update

Okay. I admit that I was a little skeptical when I decided to enroll in the Kindle Unlimited plan. I wondered if I'd be able to read enough to make the deal worthwhile. After the first 30 days, I can say that I'm totally sold on the program. In 30 days, I read 18 novels for "free" plus an uncounted number of non-fiction cookbooks, craft books and "how to save money" books. At $10/month, that's 55 cents per novel with instant access. Not too bad.

The intangible benefit is that I was able to discover a few new favorite authors that I probably wouldn't have tried at $5-$10 per e-book. Among my favorites novels were "The Art Forger" by B.A. Shapiro and "Death in Bordeaux" by Allan Massie. (Look for reviews of these two books soon.)  I haven't even started on the classic mysteries available on the program yet; I've been too busy with contemporary books.

I'll be sure to let you know what I discover next month.

Mission to Murder by Lynn Cahoon-- A Reader's Review

One of my favorite things about owning a Kindle (yes, I was a little late to the program) is that I am able to discover authors and books that aren't available in the local library or written up in the "New York Times" book review. That doesn't mean that they aren't well-written; they just have smaller marketing budgets. One such find was the "Tourist Trap" series by Lynn Cahoon. The second book in this series, "Mission to Murder," was just released on July 31st.

The Tourist Trap mysteries follow the adventures of Jill Gardner, a San Francisco stock broker turned small town bookseller. In the fictional California coastal town of South Cove, she manages to mix things up, getting involved with both the local business-to-business association, two murders and a local, very attractive police detective. She also just inherited a cottage-style house and the possible historic ruins of a California mission (hence the book's title.)

In the spirit of the "Murder She Wrote" series (with a little more spice) and in the style of Nancy Pickard and Carolyn Hart, Cahoon has penned two very readable cozy mysteries. The third installment in this series is due out in November. I'll be waiting.


(Note: the first book in this series, "Guidebook to Murder," is included in the Kindle Unlimited plan or just 99 cents if you're not a member.)