Deadly Animals, Marie Tierney’s brilliantly plotted debut mystery, introduces readers to Ava Bonney: a 14-year-old English girl obsessed with decomposing bodies.
Deadly Animals, Marie Tierney’s brilliantly plotted debut mystery, introduces readers to Ava Bonney: a 14-year-old English girl obsessed with decomposing bodies.
John Straley’s nonstop, high-octane Big Breath In introduces the unforgettable Delphine, a 68-year-old cancer patient-turned-investigator.
John Straley’s nonstop, high-octane Big Breath In introduces the unforgettable Delphine, a 68-year-old cancer patient-turned-investigator.
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If you’re a James Patterson fan it might help to be a speed reader, since this prolific suspense author turns out books at an incredible pace. Since his career began 30 years ago, Patterson has written more than 30 novels. In the last two years alone, he has published 10 new books, including his current bestseller, Mary, Mary, and his first two books for children, santaKid and Maximum Ride.

His latest is 5th Horseman, a new entry in the Women’s Murder Club series arriving in bookstores just in time for Valentine’s Day.

It’s a doozy, if I do say so myself, Patterson tells readers on his website. Four San Francisco women friends a lawyer, a reporter, a police detective and a medical examiner are on the trail of yet another killer, this time one who’s knocking off patients at the San Francisco Medical Center. The Women’s Murder Club series began with 1st to Die in 2001 and continued with 2nd Chance, 3rd Degreeand 4th of July, all bestsellers.

How does Patterson keep up this frenetic publishing pace? One answer can be found on the cover of 5th Horseman, where New York author Maxine Paetro is credited as Patterson’s co-writer. Paetro’s name first showed up on the cover of 4th of July, and she had been mentioned in the acknowledgments of several previous books. Though it’s a touchy subject, Patterson has been using collaborators for years, including Howard Roughan, Peter de Jonge and Andrew Gross, who was the credited co-writer on the two previous Murder Club books as well as the 2005 beach novel, Lifeguard.

Serving as co-writer for a brand-name author like Patterson can be a smart career move, as Gross discovered late last year when he landed what is believed to be a multimillion dollar deal to write three books for William Morrow. Whether he can achieve the incredible success and longevity of his mentor, only time will tell.

If you're a James Patterson fan it might help to be a speed reader, since this prolific suspense author turns out books at an incredible pace. Since his career began 30 years ago, Patterson has written more than 30 novels. In the last two years…
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The website of The Lost Symbol offers this teaser: “9.15.09: All Will Be Revealed.” Until that date, we can only rely on the publisher to keep us informed with hints about Dan Brown’s long-anticipated follow-up to The Da Vinci Code, in the form of “cryptic tweets” and Facebook messages.

Virtually no one knows the specifics of The Lost Symbol—the team at Random House’s Doubleday imprint is relying on Brown’s already-loyal following, rather than advance praise from reviewers, to create buzz for the new thriller. Thus, the books are on lockdown until September 15. With an initial print run of 5 million copies, the book will represent the largest first printing in the history of Random House—and the company hopes it will be a publishing sensation, especially after several years of delayed release dates. Considering that The Da Vinci Code has sold 81 million copies worldwide, and its movie counterpart made $750 million, the odds are good that The Lost Symbol will land a long-term spot at the top of bestseller lists.

A little guesswork à la symbologist Robert Langdon can give us some clues as to the plot of The Lost Symbol, promised by Sonny Mehta, Editor-in-Chief of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, to be “a brilliant and compelling thriller.”

From the publisher, we know that the novel will portray 12 hours of Langdon’s life in Washington, D.C., and the plot will revolve around the Freemasons, an organization that Brown has called the “oldest fraternity in history.”

We also know that Brown’s original title for the book was “The Solomon Key.” The Key of Solomon is an important symbol in Freemason rituals. For those who want to learn more before The Lost Symbol arrives in bookstores, check out Cracking the Freemason’s Code : The Truth about Solomon’s Key and the Brotherhood by Robert D.L. Cooper, a Scottish Freemason and historian who provides an inside look at this secretive organization.

The “cryptic tweets” from the Twitter page of The Lost Symbol are nothing if not  . . .  cryptic. These short messages include questions and puzzling clues. Examples include the query “How could a precious stone burn 20 years of Isaac’s research?” and a link to an article about Robert Hanssen, a double agent who spied on the FBI for the Soviet Union and Russia. One tweet promised to reveal Langdon’s next adversary once Dan Brown’s Facebook page reaches 100,000 fans. (At press time, there were just over 60,000.)

The Facebook page for The Lost Symbol offers equally baffling tidbits, such as a link to an article about ancient pyramids with the comment that “the pyramid is a highly celebrated symbol in Freemasonry.”

And then there is the novel’s cover. The American version features the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., lit up against the background of a large red wax seal. Embedded in the wax is an unidentifiable symbol. The U.K. and Australian cover differs slightly in that the Capitol appears below a Masonic key. There have been many theories tying the Freemasons to our nation’s capital—including speculation that the streets of Washington, D.C., were planned to physically mirror important Masonic symbols. It’s also interesting to note that one of the most famous Freemasons is none other than George Washington, for whom the capital city is named.

Stephen Rubin, a former president of Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, has implied that there is special significance behind the publication date of The Lost Symbol: “Dan Brown has a very specific release date for the publication of his new book, and when the book is published, his readers will see why.”

The Key of Solomon, pyramids, important dates and an FBI spy—all in a 12-hour period of time? All in a 528-page novel? Until September 15, we can only guess whether these clues make direct references to events in the novel, or simply allude to greater themes. According to Jason Kaufman, Brown’s editor, the novel will show us “an unseen world of mysticism, secret societies and hidden locations, with a stunning twist that long predates America.”

Mehta insists that Brown’s novel is “well worth the wait.” In the meantime, we can download The Lost Symbol’s countdown widget online, re-read The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons and brush up on Freemason conspiracy theories. And get lots of sleep. For millions of booklovers, the evening of Tuesday, September 15, is shaping up to be an all-nighter.  

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All your questions answered in the review of The Lost Symbol.

The website of The Lost Symbol offers this teaser: “9.15.09: All Will Be Revealed.” Until that date, we can only rely on the publisher to keep us informed with hints about Dan Brown’s long-anticipated follow-up to The Da Vinci Code, in the form of “cryptic…

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The ninth novel in Ridley Pearson’s series featuring Seattle police detective Lou Boldt cleverly combines a high-tech crime with one of the oldest plot twists in the mystery genre: the stolen object hidden in plain sight device first used in Poe’s “The Purloined Letter.” In fact, the title of the novel, The Body of David Hayes, is itself something of an exercise in misdirection.

David Hayes once worked as a computer specialist at the bank where Lou Boldt’s wife, Liz, now directs technical operations. A digital whiz kid, Hayes managed to embezzle $17 million that no one could trace, though investigators suspected it had been stashed in an offshore account. Convicted of wire fraud and sent to prison for four years, Hayes is paroled just as the bank is about to conclude a profitable merger. When the two institutions’ records are merged, the $17 million transaction that he has apparently hidden somewhere in the bank’s computers will disappear.

Liz Boldt is not only one of the few people with access to the bank’s highest-security computers, she was also having an extramarital affair with Hayes at the time of the embezzlement. Oh, and a videotape of her having sex with Hayes has surfaced and is quickly circulating. The Boldts’ marriage is threatened by her affair, and both of the Boldts are in danger of, at best, losing their jobs and, at worst, being implicated in an ever-lengthening list of criminal offenses. Ultimately, Liz must make an anguished choice between what is best for her family and what is best for the bank.

Pearson shows his usual mastery of the intricacies of structure and the subtleties of suspenseful pacing. He is clearly fascinated by the kinds of ironies that keep character and situation connected even as events accelerate and the characters’ understanding of those events seems always a day late and a dollar short. The situation he presents is pretty close to absolute misery for the Boldts, but this gripping thriller is a terrific diversion for Pearson’s readers. Martin Kich is a professor of English at Wright State University.

The ninth novel in Ridley Pearson's series featuring Seattle police detective Lou Boldt cleverly combines a high-tech crime with one of the oldest plot twists in the mystery genre: the stolen object hidden in plain sight device first used in Poe's "The Purloined Letter." In…
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With the release of Masquerade in 1996 Gayle Lynds joined the deified ranks of spy thriller authors like Robert Ludlum and John le CarrŽ. That novel was a paranoid tour de force about a CIA agent, Liz Sansborough, hunting (and being hunted by) a notorious Cold War assassin called the Carnivore, who happens to be her father. The response to the stand-alone novel was so overwhelming (Lynds says readers “asked, begged and demanded” that she bring the main characters back) that Lynds was compelled to write a sequel. The Coil finds Sansborough far removed from her former life as a CIA operative; she is contentedly teaching a course in the psychology of violence at the University of California, Santa Barbara. But her father’s legacy continues to plague her, even from the grave. Someone has unearthed the Carnivore’s secret files (who hired him, how much they paid, who was killed, etc.) and is blackmailing prominent international business and political figures to further a shadowy agenda. Sansborough becomes a target as well; when her cousin is kidnapped in Paris, Sansborough must somehow find the files before more innocents die.

With breakneck pacing, generous helpings of suspense and intrigue, and a plot with more twists than a bag of pretzels, Lynds’ novel has all the ingredients of a terrific thriller. As Sansborough desperately searches for the Carnivore’s files while trying to elude the CIA, French police and an army of assassins, she makes James Bond look like a Boy Scout learning how to tie knots. Brutally violent, delectably complicated and masterfully researched, The Coil is a spy thriller of the highest order whose mind-blowing conclusion will leave readers slack-jawed in amazement and have them salivating for more.

Paul Goat Allen is a freelance editor and writer in Syarcuse, New York.

With the release of Masquerade in 1996 Gayle Lynds joined the deified ranks of spy thriller authors like Robert Ludlum and John le CarrŽ. That novel was a paranoid tour de force about a CIA agent, Liz Sansborough, hunting (and being hunted by) a notorious…
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Don’t be surprised if this generation-spanning spy saga ignites widespread nostalgia for the days of the Cold War. It immerses the reader in a world of comparative political clarity, a time when clear-cut secular ideologies clashed on a grand scale. Robert Littell’s characters spend little time, though, discussing political philosophies. They know from the start which side they’re on. The Company of the title is, of course, the Central Intelligence Agency.

The story begins in 1950, just as the CIA is emerging from World War II’s Office of Strategic Services. By this time, the U.S. and Russia are already circling each other for global supremacy, their recent common cause against Germany relegated to history. Into this bubbling geopolitical stew come Jack McAuliffe and Leo Kritzky, Yale roommates recruited by the CIA to join its first generation of shadow warriors. A fellow Yalie, Russian exchange student Yevgeny Alexandrovich Tsipin, returns home for KGB training and reassignment to America as a deep undercover agent.

Joining McAuliffe and Kritzky for a series of missions that will continue until the Soviet Union crumbles is high-principled E. Winston Ebby Ebbitt II, a Columbia University law school graduate. In the years ahead, these three friends will be in the backrooms and on the frontlines at the Hungarian uprising, the Bay of Pigs invasion, various domestic upheavals and the Russian war with Afghanistan. We see them fall in love, marry and have children who eventually follow in their furtive footsteps. Unlike writers who use historical characters and events as backdrops for their fictional ones, Littell integrates them both seamlessly. The real CIA head spook, James Angleton, hovers over Liddell’s trio of fictional agents, alternately inspiring and outraging them with his mania for detail and his raging paranoia. Stung by the revelation that his mentor and good friend Kim Philby is a spy for Russia, Angleton is convinced there’s a high-level mole in the agency.

CIA directors Allen Dulles, William Colby, William Casey and others have speaking roles here, as do Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Reagan. Glimpsed in the background are such familiars as William F. Buckley Jr., E. Howard Hunt, William Sloan Coffin and Frank Sinatra, his Rat Pack and gangster friends. Littell populates his narrative with colorful, inventive spymasters, chief among them Angleton’s Soviet counterpart, the pedophile Starik; the CIA’s hard-drinking and duplicitous Harvey The Sorcerer Torriti; and Israel’s eagle-eyed Ezra Ben Ezra, affectionately dubbed the Rabbi. Readers who lived through or who have studied the Cold War will relish Littell’s touches of verisimilitude his off-handed references to movies, comic strips, songs, personalities and books which were popular during the periods he writes about. In one scene, the Sorcerer praises Littell’s own then-current novel, The Defection of A.J. Lewinter.

Certain references, though, reveal either the author’s carelessness or else his taunting of readers to be attentive to the kind of minute details by which spies live or die. For example, he has President Kennedy recommending Catch-22 several months before it was reviewed in The New York Times. He has a character in February 1951, listening to the song Kisses Sweeter Than Wine, which he identifies as then being number three on the American top ten. Not likely, since the song didn’t even enter the Billboard charts until August 1951, and then rose only to the number 19 spot. His characters use such words and phrases as security blanket, maven and liaising, not, perhaps, before they actually entered the language, but certainly well before they became conversationally commonplace.

In the book’s final chapter, set in 1995, Littell makes it plain that even though the Cold War is over, the great game [of spying] goes on. He describes a man, code-named Ramon, waiting in his car in a Washington, D.C., suburb to pick up $50,000 for American secrets he has stolen for the Russians. That man was real FBI agent Robert Hanssen and it would be five more years before he was caught. Edward Morris reviews from Nashville.

Don't be surprised if this generation-spanning spy saga ignites widespread nostalgia for the days of the Cold War. It immerses the reader in a world of comparative political clarity, a time when clear-cut secular ideologies clashed on a grand scale. Robert Littell's characters spend little…
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Someone is killing little girls in Wind Gap, Missouri. Hoping to scoop the bigger newspapers, an editor at the Chicago Daily Post sends reporter Camille Preaker to the tiny town to cover the story. Wind Gap just happens to be Camille’s hometown, the very place she left the first chance she got and never looked back. After her return, Camille slowly comes to realize that the murders and her own hidden horrors are more closely tied than she could have imagined.

It’s hard to describe this bone-chilling debut by Gillian Flynn (lead TV critic for Entertainment Weekly) without resorting to language that could be found in a horror movie trailer: haunting, shocking and skin-crawlingly creepy are all apt terms. But the story and the characters inhabiting it are anything but clichéd. Camille’s hard-edged hypochondriac mother and her manipulative, beautiful much-younger stepsister occupy central roles, but just as intriguing are the Kansas City cop called in to assist on the case and John Keene, the brother of the most recent victim, whose open grieving makes many see him as a prime suspect. Camille herself is the most fascinating of the bunch. She has spent a lifetime trying to numb her pain by carving words into her body. Her left wrist bears the scar of “weary,” while her back reads “spiteful” and “tangle,” and her chest is branded with “blossom,” “dosage” and “bottle.” Camille literally ran out of room on her body before turning for help, and she now medicates her urge to cut with heavy doses of bourbon. Bringing the killer to light may be just the thing to liberate her own spirit.

Sharp Objects is incredibly disturbing, but Flynn’s powerful prose shines a light on the beauty that can rise out of dysfunction. With this novel’s perfectly picked, sinister details (the killer is plucking his victims’ baby teeth) and well-established pacing, readers will find themselves helplessly hurtling towards the haunting conclusion.

Iris Blasi is a writer in New York City.

Someone is killing little girls in Wind Gap, Missouri. Hoping to scoop the bigger newspapers, an editor at the Chicago Daily Post sends reporter Camille Preaker to the tiny town to cover the story. Wind Gap just happens to be Camille's hometown, the very place…
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Former NYPD detective John Corey is back in Nelson DeMille's 14th novel, <b>Wild Fire</b>. If DeMille has become a bit of an alarmist, it's still worthwhile fun to follow Corey, the world's most irreverent terrorist hunter, as he runs down bad guys and dispenses definitive justice in an ambiguous world.

A member of the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force and a formidable thorn in the side of wrongdoers and superiors alike, Corey has been the main man in four DeMille thrillers. He has been shot at, beaten and threatened with firing more times than he can count, but he measures success only in results. He also is loyal to his friends, so when a fellow agent turns up dead on a fishy surveillance mission, Corey and his partner Kate Mayfield head to upstate New York to investigate the curiously named Custer Hill Gun Club.

Mayfield is an FBI agent who is technically Corey's boss as well as his wife which Corey would surely flag as redundant. The two soon butt heads with Bain Madox, the ultra-rich owner and founder of the gun club. Madox is a rich Vietnam veteran who is righter than Rumsfeld. He also is either insane, brilliant or both, but that's for the individual reader to judge. Madox's diabolic plan is worthy of a Bond villain. Luckily, Corey has no problem playing the role of 007 as he and his wife try to stay alive while thwarting Madox's not entirely unimaginable nuclear solution to the chaos in the Middle East.

Corey, first introduced in Plum Island, keeps a stiff upper lip and cracks jokes in the face of danger. He is also grandstanding, irritating, puerile and at his best just plain obnoxious. So how is he popular enough for DeMille to have brought him back for a fourth turn? Because anyone who has ever had a boss, an enemy or a wife yes, Detective Corey, redundant again has wanted to be Corey for at least a moment. And, oh yeah, he also gets the job done.

 

Ian Schwartz writes from New York City.

Former NYPD detective John Corey is back in Nelson DeMille's 14th novel, <b>Wild Fire</b>. If DeMille has become a bit of an alarmist, it's still worthwhile fun to follow Corey, the world's most irreverent terrorist hunter, as he runs down bad guys and dispenses definitive…

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The corpus delecti makes an appearance barely five pages into The Master of Rain, a classy noir whodunit set in the polluted and evil milieu of 1920s Shanghai. From there on, the action never looks back. Within minutes of receiving his first assignment, Richard Field, a fresh and idealistic English recruit to the Shanghai international police force, sees the horribly mutilated body of a beautiful young Russian woman, watches the beheading of a potential witness to the crime and becomes mesmerized by the victim’s neighbor, the alluring and enigmatic Natasha Medvedev all while trying to keep up with Caprisi, his blunt and cynical American partner.

Everyone suspects a sinister and powerful Chinese gangster named Lu is behind the brutal murder; the dead woman, Lena Orlov, is one of many young daughters of Russian aristocracy displaced by their homeland revolution who are working for Lu as prostitutes and dancers in his clubs. But it’s not that simple. Not only is Lu well-protected by an army of henchmen, he is also protected, to a certain extent, by his carefully constructed legitimacy in the business and government communities. And as Field soon finds out, no one can be trusted. In a dirty city, everyone appears tainted, even his colleagues on the police force, and Field must be careful in whom he confides. In order to save his life and pursue the investigation, he is forced to put his trust in his partner Caprisi, and even that last trust is eventually shaken to its roots.

Against everyone’s warnings, Field falls for Natasha Medvedev. He believes, even though she is maddeningly reticent, that she is the key to the murder of Lena Orlov and is, in fact, the next victim in what might be a chain of serial murders. He is drawn deeper and deeper into a personal involvement that clouds his judgment and endangers them both. The investigation and his attempts to get the truth from Natasha rush to an exquisitely crafted climax.

The action plays out over only a few days at a pace that never falters, and the characterizations, especially that of the city of Shanghai itself, are rich, full and colorful. Everyone has a story to tell there, everyone is lugging some kind of baggage, including Richard Field. An interesting side plot of just the right texture and force involving Richard’s relationship with his uncle Geoffrey, a Shanghai government official, and Geoffrey’s wife, Penelope, adds unexpected depth to Field’s character and creates one of the book’s several satisfying complexities. In the end, The Master of Rain is a good old-fashioned murder mystery. Its inherent danger, its passionate and idealistic protagonist, and its twists, turns and danglings make it a great read. The debut novel of Tom Bradby, a foreign correspondent for British television’s ITN, The Master of Rain is a dark, fast-paced juggernaut all the way to its cliffhanger ending. Sam Harrison is a writer and hospice nurse in Ormond Beach, Florida.

The corpus delecti makes an appearance barely five pages into The Master of Rain, a classy noir whodunit set in the polluted and evil milieu of 1920s Shanghai. From there on, the action never looks back. Within minutes of receiving his first assignment, Richard Field,…
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Edward Wozny is an ambitious young investment banker with two weeks to kill until he’s transferred from New York City to England to fill a coveted position in the bank’s London headquarters. Before he leaves, however, the powerful firm has one last request: he must help one of the company’s most important clients, the Duke and Duchess of Bowmry, organize a personal library of rare books. At first, Edward is annoyed at being shanghaied into performing such a tedious task on his vacation, but once he arrives at the clients’ expensive Manhattan digs, his resentment turns to intrigue. Hidden in the attic of the vine-covered limestone townhouse are unopened crates of ancient books some of which date from before the 16th century. Edward is told that the duchess wants him to covertly look for a legendary medieval codex authored by a minor literary figure, Gervace of Langford. Edward’s quest for the mysterious codex soon turns obsessive, and his impending job in London is almost forgotten as he becomes entangled in the codex’s shadowy purpose as well as the intrigue surrounding the tumultuous relationship between the duke and duchess. While searching for the codex in a rare book repository, Edward meets and enlists the help of Margaret Napier, a Columbia grad student who is a “cross between Stephen Hawking and Nancy Drew.” But is it mere coincidence that her dissertation is on the works of Gervace of Langford? As Edward’s obsession with the codex grows, so does his fixation with a highly addictive interactive computer game. When he finds shocking parallels between the game and secrets associated with the codex, his mundane investment banker existence is turned upside down. Lev Grossman, a book critic for Time magazine, has made the cerebral, stylish Codex one of those rare novels that transcend categorization: it is part mystery, part thriller, part romance and part literary history. No matter where this book is eventually shelved, it should and undoubtedly will be sought out by discerning readers everywhere. Paul Goat Allen is a freelance editor and writer in Syracuse, New York.

Edward Wozny is an ambitious young investment banker with two weeks to kill until he's transferred from New York City to England to fill a coveted position in the bank's London headquarters. Before he leaves, however, the powerful firm has one last request: he must…
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Surely one of the more untraditional collections of short stories published in recent memory, A Kudzu Christmas, is a beguiling set of 12 supremely spooky Southern mysteries. In the unsettling Swimming Without Annette, writer Alix Strauss creates a story of vigilantism readers won’t soon forget. After her lover is killed in the alley outside a local diner, Karen stakes out the place. While she waits and watches and eats countless tuna melts, Karen reminisces about Christmases past, including the one when her lover gives her a glass star. Suffice it to say that beautiful star becomes a weapon by the end of the story. In Yes, Ginny, by Suzanne Hudson, a young girl whose good-for-nothing stepfather does little but drink and berate is given a little holiday wish of her own when he suddenly disappears on Christmas morning. Chilly and surreal, A Kudzu Christmas offers a grown-up reprieve from all things Santa.

Amy Scribner is celebrating the holidays with her family in Olympia, Washington.

Surely one of the more untraditional collections of short stories published in recent memory, A Kudzu Christmas, is a beguiling set of 12 supremely spooky Southern mysteries. In the unsettling Swimming Without Annette, writer Alix Strauss creates a story of vigilantism readers won't soon forget.…
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Mario Delvecchio is one of the world’s most respected art restorers. His current project is Bellini’s altarpiece in the Church of San Giovanni Crisostomo in Venice. But when a bomb goes off at the office of Wartime Claims and Inquiries in Vienna, Mario assumes his real name, Gabriel Allon, and his part-time job assassin for Israeli intelligence.

This third volume of Daniel Silva’s trilogy dealing with the unfinished business of the Holocaust takes us from the streets of Vienna to the innermost secrets of the Vatican to Argentina and back. The first book in this cycle, The English Assassin, dealt with Nazi art looting and the collaboration of the Swiss banking system. The second book, The Confessor, examined the role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and the silence of Pope Pius XII. This third book is based, like its predecessors, on actual events. Is it possible that even today a Nazi war criminal is living in Vienna? What does he know about Aktion 1005, the attempt to destroy all evidence of the Holocaust? A Death in Vienna gives a chilling view of both the horrors of war and the politics of Austria. What is possible in today’s world when the secrets of the past cannot be contained? The sins of the fathers can control the secrets of power and politics. The search for the truth leads Gabriel to his mother’s wartime experience at the Birkenau concentration camp, and he experiences her life through her own testimony found at Yad Vashm, the world’s foremost center for Holocaust research and documentation in Israel. As he discovers the secrets of his family’s past, other truths unfold. What do the CIA and Russian intelligence have to do with the Vienna bombing? Is there ever justification for protecting a murderer? With Silva, there are often more questions than answers, but there is always a relentless search for the truth. Derrick Norman is voracious reader who spent many years in publishing and enjoys a good game of golf.

Mario Delvecchio is one of the world's most respected art restorers. His current project is Bellini's altarpiece in the Church of San Giovanni Crisostomo in Venice. But when a bomb goes off at the office of Wartime Claims and Inquiries in Vienna, Mario assumes his…
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Like his hit debut novel The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl's second book, The Poe Shadow, deals with literary obsession, mystery and murder. This time, Pearl investigates the unexplained death of Edgar Allan Poe. Quentin Clark, a young Baltimore lawyer who admires Poe and had corresponded with him, takes it upon himself to discover what happened during the poet's last days. When he learns that the character C. Auguste Dupin, who solves puzzling crimes in several Poe stories, was based on a real person, Clark heads to France to find the real Dupin and bring him to America to solve the mystery. Poe's detective was gifted in ratiocination, which Clark defines as deliberate reasoning combined with imagination. It is not, he insists, interchangeable with logic. It has something to do with being able to see and understand things that other people cannot, and it is vital to the telling of this tale.

Though the novel gets off to a slow start, the pace picks up, and readers are soon taken on a wild ride through the streets of 19th-century Baltimore, as two Frenchmen who claim to be the inspiration for Dupin race each other to the truth. In the meantime, Clark has run-ins with royalty, international spies, slave traders and a female assassin, and imperils his law practice, his relationship with the woman he loves and his family home, not to mention his life. But like any good detective story, the novel eventually comes to a neat and rewarding conclusion in which all the strange loose ends are tied up.

No one truly knows what happened to Poe in the days before his death, but Pearl's fascinating theory (which draws liberally from both fact and fiction) provides a satisfying hypothesis. The Poe Shadow is an entertaining tale of ratiocination that would make Poe himself proud.

Sarah E. White is a freelance writer in Arkansas.

Like his hit debut novel The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl's second book, The Poe Shadow, deals with literary obsession, mystery and murder. This time, Pearl investigates the unexplained death of Edgar Allan Poe. Quentin Clark, a young Baltimore lawyer who admires Poe and had corresponded…

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Edgar Allan Poe arguably one of America’s most influential writers makes an appearance in Andrew Taylor’s literary thriller An Unpardonable Crime. Although Poe, a precocious 10-year-old living with his foster family in London in 1819, is very much a peripheral figure in Taylor’s grisly tale of treachery and murder, he is the spindle on which the numerous plots and subplots revolve. The story is narrated by Thomas Shield, Edgar Allan’s teacher at the Reverend Bransby’s Manor House School. A disgraced veteran of the battle of Waterloo who was recently hospitalized for mental instability, Shield is a highly intelligent and hopelessly romantic man struggling to find his place in an England of extremes ranging from the lavish mansions of Mayfair to the crumbling tenements of St. Giles and Seven Dials. While at the school, Shield becomes involved with two young students who have befriended each other: Charles Frant, the overly sheltered son of a prominent banker, and Edgar Allan, the foster son of an American businessman managing his interests in London. In a series of gruesome plot twists that would make Poe himself proud an audacious deathbed robbery, a brutal murder, an incarceration in a coffin, the discovery of a rotting human fingertip and a French-speaking parrot squawking enigmatic warnings Shield slowly loses control of his own destiny as he is drawn into a dangerous game of subterfuge and duplicity.

Aside from the rich descriptions (the use of fog as metaphor throughout is brilliant), the most notable aspect of this novel is Taylor’s masterful use of some of Poe’s most renowned themes, including victimization, extreme states of existence, mysterious presences and mourning for the dead. A delectably dark blend of mystery, gothic horror, romance and literary history, An Unpardonable Crime will leave readers captivated until the very end a fittingly macabre tribute to the master of the macabre.

Edgar Allan Poe arguably one of America's most influential writers makes an appearance in Andrew Taylor's literary thriller An Unpardonable Crime. Although Poe, a precocious 10-year-old living with his foster family in London in 1819, is very much a peripheral figure in Taylor's grisly…

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