Book Review: Missing Person by Patrick Modiano

Missing Person by Patrick Modiano

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I made a mistake in looking at a few reviews of this novel before I read it. I was taken by the idea of a lyrical novel about what is identity. I was looking forward to reading a mystery by a Nobel Prize winner.

Had I not read the reviews and description of the novel, I'd have enjoyed it for what I thought it was: a modern existentialist novel in the style of Camus and Sartre. Once I gave up looking for a genre novel, I loved this book.

Yes, there is a mystery in that the missing person, the narrator, has no idea who he is. His search is for identity, the "who am I" question. His conflict lies in desperately wanting to belong somewhere to the extent he tries on different names to see if he is that person.

If a reader is looking for a mystery, this is probably not the book for you. If, however, you are looking for a study in the meaning of identity, this slim volume will entertain and inform.



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Book Review: Mercedes Wore Black by Andrea Brunais

Mercedes Wore Black by Andrea Brunais

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Andrea Brunais has jumped into the realm of Florida-based mysteries with a well-written, finely-plotted addition to the subgenre. Along with Randy Wayne White, Carl Hiaasen and John MacDonald, Brunais has her own cast of quirky Florida characters, environmental issues and a mystery what leaves the reader wondering what is going to happen until the very end.

Janis Pearl Hawk, newly fired from her job on a central Florida newspaper, needs work. When a friend offers her a chance to write a blog covering everything from local politics to corruption to environmental issues, she leaps on the opportunity. She meets with her friend, Mercedes of the title, who tells her all about the candidate for governor she works for.

Enter the potential hunky maybe love interest in the guise of the gubernatorial candidate. When he offers her a job on his staff, she faces an ethical dilemma: should she give up her new-found freedom to pursue corruption or work for the man who shares much of her worldview.

Tallahassee politicos, sleazy political influencers, a gay best friend and fellow journalist, several committed ecologists who are too afraid of the special interest groups provide a cast of characters that keep the reader turning pages until the grand reveal at the end. One can only hope that this is the first in a series of great Florida mysteries, this time with a female sleuth.

Redeployment by Phil Klay

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


While Klay may have won the National Book Award for fiction with this short story collection, he breaks no new ground it. War stories abound from WWI to Iraqistan. Some offer deep insights into the life of a soldier. Some are blatantly anti or pro-war. Some exalt warriors as heroes. Some are well written; some aren't.

Had my book club not selected this work, I might not have finished it. The language in one story was little more than a list of acronyms a non-military reader wouldn't understand. I didn't "get" it. Some were little more than rehashings of Vietnam-era motifs with the desert substituted for the jungle.

One touched my heart. The last one focused on a young Marine in a battery company whose long-range artillery had taken out a nest of insurgents. Or had it? The Marine's battery mates discuss how many bad guys it had killed. One wanted to see the bodies for proof. The narrator goes on a search for the dead insurgents, only to find that the hospital on his base only handled coalition casualties. The closing scene with soldiers standing silently while a fallen comrade is carried past for transport home borders on the maudlin, but just misses it.

Had I not had to finish the book, I would have missed what I consider the one gem in it.

Book Review: Return to Me by Kelly Moran

Return to Me by Kelly Moran

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I asked for and received an ARC for this novel. While I don't read romance all that much, I've become Kelly Moran's fan. Here she returns to a familiar theme of two broken people coming together and learning to trust each other.

Ten years after Cole Covington and Mia Galdon fall in love and are torn apart by Cole’s mother, they meet again. Cole returns from the war in the Middle East with post traumatic stress disorder. When he was severely wounded, his rescuers find him holding a picture of Mia. So broken is he by the loss of some of his men in combat and by nearly losing his life that he refuses to leave his coastal home near Wilmington.

Cole’s sister contacts Mia and asks her to care for Cole in his home. Unsure if she wants to see the man who broke her heart, she finally agrees to nurse Cole back to health. Her job is to get him well enough to care for himself, leave the house and return to a functional life.

Romance readers will enjoy the journey of the two main characters as they try to deny they still love each other. Moran renders familiar tropes with intensity and a fresh voice.

Book Review: Nothing to Lose by Lee Child

Nothing to Lose by Lee Child

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Lee Child's twelfth Jack Reacher novel isn't as good as the earlier ones. Reacher is always himself: the loner who walks into town and routs out the bad guys.

In Nothing to Lose, Reacher walks through the town of Hope, Colorado, and out the same highway to the next town, Despair. When he arrives in Despair, he stops for a cup of coffee, is arrested and charged with vagrancy, because he has no job. The fact that he doesn't want to work in Despair and take away a job from a local makes no difference to the police. Reacher is driven to the halfway point between Hope and Despair and dumped to walk back to Hope.

If you know Reacher, he's not going to take this lying down, or walking around. He decides to return and find out what the town is hiding. Okay, his making a decision that the town has something to hide isn't based on anything in the book. From this point onward, it's Reacher against the town of Despair. A local female policeman provides support and a brief love interest.

Plotting, scheming, trespassing, bombs. Child throws these and more into what is more of a mash up than the type of thriller he normally writes. A reader new to the Jack Reacher stories will wonder what all the fuss is about.

Book Review: Deeper Than the Dead by Tami Hoad

Deeper Than the Dead by Tami Hoag

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Tami Hoag once again crafted a mystery that keeps the reader engaged from the opening when four elementary school children find a dead body in the woods until the last page.

The carefully posed body, half buried, head resting on a stone, with eyes and mouth glued shut, terrifies the children and their teacher. Their safe world in a nearly crime-free town in California is safe no more. The loss of innocence of both the children and the teacher extends into the town itself.

To help the police solve the crime, an FBI investigator who has helped pioneer a new profiling technique volunteers his time. Nearly crippled by the remnants of a bullet in his brain, he is not officially on the job because his doctor hasn't cleared him to work. But he is needed and so he travels from Quantico to California.

Clues pile up as to the identity of the killer, leading to a wild ride filled with red herrings and all the men in the novel falling under suspicion of being the killer.

Hoag offers a blend of a serial killer with a twist, a host of possible suspects, a teacher desperately trying to preserve her students' innocence and an FBI agent who needs to feel vital again. The blend works on all levels.

I listened to this on a long driving trip. I recommend it for long car rides or cuddling up on a dark winter night with a cup of cocoa and the lights on.

Book Review: Real Santa by William Hazelgrove

Real Santa by William Hazelgrove

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


We expect feel-good books at Christmas. No one wants to read a downer of a story. Heck, even A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens has a happy ending. So does REAL SANTA by William Hazelgrove.

Take one father who wasn't much of a father beyond being a good provider in his first marriage. Add a second marriage with a young girl who desperately wants to keep believing in the magic of Santa. Add losing a job just before Christmas. And stir in one man's desire to keep the Santa myth alive for at least one more year. And that is REAL SANTA.

Hazelgrove takes the reader back to the intersection of childhood when we could believe in magic and to growing up and out of the wonder of such magic. George decides he can really be Santa for one night. He nearly bankrupts the family trying to fulfill a promise to a child.

With the help of a cast of zany characters, including a frustrated Australian film director who turns the idea into a full-fledged production and a man who raises and leases reindeer. George works night and day to put together the pieces of getting live reindeer up onto his roof and him down the chimney.

The story stands on its own and belongs on the shelf of Christmas stories for decades to come.

I won't be a spoiler, but it does have a happy ending.