The Death Factory by Greg Iles

First Line: When you're told that your dying father has something important to say to you before he passes, two feelings flash through you: first, the sense that you're in an Alexandre Dumas novel, that some momentous family secret is about to be revealed-- the lost inheritance, your true paternity, something like that.

A heart attack sends Tom Cage to the emergency room and he insists that his son, Penn, be brought to his side to hear a dying declaration. But when Penn gets there, Tom denies ever having made the request. The whole thing sends Penn on a painful trip down Memory Lane when he was working in a Houston district attorney's office while caring for his dying wife. That DA's office was known as "the death factory" for sending more killers to death row than any other in America.

As Penn's wife lay dying, a tormented forensic technician comes to him for help. He brings evidence of a crime lab in chaos and begs Penn to prevent a gross miscarriage of justice. Now Penn has to fight the death factory with everything he's got-- both at home and on the job.

I don't think anyone could be a real crime fiction lover and not be aware of Greg Iles. Until now, that's all I was-- aware-- and since Iles tends to write quite weighty tomes, I decided to read this novella to see if I wanted to read more.

What I found was a well-told tale with lyrical descriptive passages and a main character I quickly grew to like. The storytelling flowed well, and the plot certainly kept my attention, especially with its emotional elements concerning Penn's father and wife. All my reactions were positive but for some strange reason, Penn didn't set my world on fire. As much as I liked him, I have no real burning desire to read more (although I may very well do so). This is a reaction I very seldom have so I'll have to ponder it a bit more. I may yet become a Penn Cage fan. Only time will tell.
 

The Death Factory by Greg Iles

eISBN: 9780062336682

HarperCollins © 2014

eBook, 92 pages

A Penn Cage novella

Rating: B+

Source: Purchased from Amazon.

The Cherry Cola Book Club by Ashton Lee

First Line: Maura Beth Mayhew shut her sky blue eyes and let the unsettling words that had just been thrown her way sink in for a few tense moments.

The library in Cherico, Mississippi, isn't going to win any design awards. It's tiny, has corrugated iron siding, and no parking lot, but for the past six years, it has been librarian Maura Beth Mayhew's pride and joy. When City Council members tell Maura Beth that the library will be closed down, she fights back until she's given a grace period. She has to boost library circulation dramatically, or she'll be looking for another job-- and Cherico's citizens will have to travel a distance to get their reading materials. It's not until the Cherry Cola Book Club is founded that Maura Beth has something to smile about.

This book is filled with Southern charm and warmth, and scenes of people getting together over good food to talk books and get folks using the library warm the cockles of my heart, but I have to admit that I could never completely believe the premise of this book-- and it's got everything to do with my childhood. I grew up in a small village in central Illinois. My mother took over as librarian of a neglected, seldom-used building of out-dated books and a floor that was held up by huge jacks in the basement. With a tiny budget, it was my mother's job to increase circulation and make that library something of which to be proud. She did. By the time she left, our village library had over twice the circulation of the library in the much larger county seat.

Why does this prevent me from falling hook, line, and sinker for this book? Because Maura Beth has been the librarian in Cherico for six years, and during that time it seems that all she's done is ask for a parking lot and computers. One of her assistants states that there are plenty of days that no one at all comes in the library-- and Maura Beth is shocked when the City Council starts thinking of closing the place down? It's only when she has that "gun" of closing held to her head that she finally rolls up her sleeves and starts doing her job.

Don't get me wrong: there's a lot to like in this book, and there are good tips for anyone who's wanting to increase their library traffic. But my own memories of all the work my mother put into the library in our village prevents me from giving this book a whole-hearted recommendation. Loving books and libraries as I do, this makes me feel a tad guilty.

The Cherry Cola Book Club by Ashton Lee

ISBN: 9780758273413

Kensington © 2013

Paperback, 272 pages

Fiction, #1 Cherry Cola Book Club

Rating: C

Source: Purchased from Amazon as an eBook. 

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

Title: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
Author: Tom Franklin
ISBN: 9780062048745
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2010
eBook, 304 pages
Genre: Thriller
Rating: B+
Source: Purchased from Barnes and Noble.

First Line: The Rutherford girl had been missing for eight days when Larry Ott returned home and found a monster waiting in his house.

The last thing Larry Ott needed was finding that monster because his life has been one very long row to hoe. Only child of lower-middle-class white parents, Larry has always been on the outside looking in. Bad at sports, preferring books and trivia... the only time Larry ever felt as though he belonged was the fleeting few months back in the late 1970s when he became friends with Silas, the son of a poor, black single mother. Things happened, words were spoken; the two boys grew apart. Silas became known as "32" due to his talent on the playing field, and Larry was the kid everyone laughed at until the night that he took a girl out on a date.

Larry's date never came home. Her body was never found. Teenaged Larry kept telling the police that he didn't have anything to do with the girl's disappearance, but the whispers grew, and the fingers kept pointing. Larry is growing old under the heavy, mildewed blanket of suspicion while former friend Silas is a police officer in town. When another girl disappears, the small town sages nod their heads, whisper, point their fingers-- and once again Larry hears footsteps coming up to his front door. But this time, this girl's disappearance is going to make Larry and Silas dig up and expose a past that they've kept buried for decades.

Author Tom Franklin swiftly introduced me to Larry Ott, misfit and social outcast. By stockpiling the minutiae of Ott's life, Franklin not only got me acquainted with a very sympathetic character, he showed me how a life can be forcibly reduced and shrunken bit by bit-- each detail fitting carefully into place like the last section of bricks in a wall. The contrast between Ott's life and that of Silas could not be greater, but as their stories are told, the facts don't quite add up. The wrong mortar has been used in building the wall around Ott. That wall needs to come down; the truth needs to come to light. The fight may have been leeched out of Larry, but will Silas have the strength to do what's right?

The language, the setting, the story, and the two characters of Larry and Silas held me captive until I finished this book. I was able to piece together what had happened to the girl who disappeared when Larry was a teenager, so that came as no surprise. What held me was needing to know what Silas would do. In many ways Silas had a brick wall built around him, too. That's the type of thing that hatred and prejudice and suspicion does. It takes real courage to make the wall topple. I knew that Larry wasn't strong enough to send his wall tumbling down, and I wasn't convinced that Silas could do it either.I had to keep reading so that I could know for sure.

Two characters that make you care about them. The ability to right an old wrong. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is very good reading.

The Judas Field by Howard Bahr

Title: The Judas Field, a Novel of the Civil War
Author: Howard Bahr
ISBN: 9780312426934
Publisher: Picador, 2007
Paperback, 304 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Rating: B
Source: Paperback Swap

First Line: Cass Wakefield was born in a double-pen log cabin just at the break of day, and before he was twenty minutes old, he was almost thrown out with the bedclothes.

Since that rather inauspicious beginning, Cass Wakefield piloted steamboats, married, was a soldier, and became a widower. For the last twenty years, he's lived in Cumberland, Mississippi, and been a traveling salesman selling Colt revolvers.

Alison Sansing lost her father and brother in the war, and for the last twenty years, she's lived in that big old house in Cumberland alone. Having just been told by her doctor that she has cancer and hasn't long to live, the thing Alison fears most is being buried in the family cemetery alone. She asks Cass Wakefield to accompany her to Franklin, Tennessee-- where her father and brother died in battle-- to recover their bodies and bring them back to Cumberland to be buried at home.

Having fought in the Battle of Franklin himself, Cass has no desire whatsoever to return to the area, but he does... for Alison. Two friends who fought alongside Cass travel with the pair, and the closer they all get to Franklin, the more vivid their memories become.

I chose to read this book because my great-great-great-grandfather fought and died in the Battle of Franklin, and the fact that James Henry Brown's uniform was blue not gray, doesn't make a bit of difference. Bahr sets his scene very carefully. The pace felt like a steam locomotive pulling out of the station and gradually gaining speed. A profound sense of sadness, of sorrow, for all that was lost, for all the lives that were forever changed, permeates the book. At one point Alison asks what the fighting was like, and the response is one of the best I've ever read about the impossibility of telling someone who wasn't there what it's like to fight in the midst of the bloodbath of battle:

"If we live a thousand years, won't ever find a way to tell it." He coughed , and turned his head to spit. "In a battle, everything is wrong, nothing you ever learned is true anymore. And when you come out-- if you do-- you can't remember. You have to put it back together by the rules you know, and you end up with a lie. That's the best you can do, and when you tell it, it'll still be a lie."

The book's sadness turns to heartbreak as the men arrive in Franklin and try to locate where the bodies were buried so long ago. Yes, things have changed, but there are still roads, still buildings, that unleash an overwhelming tide of memory and loss. It's some of the best writing about war I've ever read because Bahr never once lets graphic carnage carry his story. It's a wonderful thing when a writer credits his readers with enough imagination and feeling to fill in the blanks for themselves.

Cass Wakefield is a beautifully realized character. One I will long remember, as I will remember The Judas Field. I come away from the book feeling that I now have a tiny idea of what my ancestor went through in that time and place so long ago.

The Judas Field at Amazon.

The Judas Field at The Book Depository.

The Judas Field at Your Favorite Indie Bookseller.

Effigies by Mary Anna Evans

Title: Effigies
Author: Mary Anna Evans
ISBN: 9781590584545, Poisoned Pen Press, 2007
Genre: Amateur Sleuth, #3 Faye Longchamp mystery
Rating: B+
Source: purchased at The Poisoned Pen

First Line: Faye Longchamp had work to do, but it would wait.

From her ramshackle ancestral home on an island off the coast of Florida, Faye Longchamp and her assistant Joe Wolf Mantooth have traveled to Mississippi to help excavate a site near the sacred mound where tradition says the Choctaw Nation was born. Carroll Calhoun refuses to allow the archaeologists on his farm to investigate an even larger mound, and they are disappointed, but Calhoun breaks their hearts when he tries to bulldoze the ancient site into oblivion. When the farmer later turns up dead, Faye finds herself trying to find the killer before Joe Wolf Mantooth is thrown in jail.

I love mysteries laced with a strong dose of archaeology, and in my opinion, Evans' series featuring Faye Longchamp is the best of the bunch. She's got a fine cast of characters; she uses her settings to advantage; and she always seems able to include more history and archaeology into her stories than many other writers. Effigies is no exception. Ever since I visited Cahokia as a child, I've been fascinated with the Mound Builders. Evans added to my knowledge in an entertaining way. She also threw me right in the middle of the heat and humidity of Mississippi amongst rednecks, scholars, law enforcement, the Choctaw and handed me a mystery to sort out. The only weakness in the whole thing was the identity of the bad guy. I figured it out early on, but I didn't much care because I still had to deduce the Why. Well, that and the fact that I was enjoying playing around in the dirt with Faye again.

If you're in the mood for mysteries with interesting, multi-faceted characters, an excellent sense of place, and a good dose of history and archaeology, you can't go wrong with Mary Anna Evans' series. Go ahead. Pick up a trowel and work in a trench with Faye. You'll be glad you did.