Our Book Club in the News!

It was exciting to see book clubs featured in a recent issue of our regional newspaper, the Cape Ann Beacon... and to get coverage for our local library and our Mystery Book Club. So with this post, the cat is out of the bag! You will learn the identity/location of the library book club I referred to in various initial posts as well as my real identity! Makes me think of a Superman plot where Lois finds out about Clark Kent.

OK- here we are... well not quite. We had about 4 more members arrive after the photographer left. This picture was taken from the stacks/upper level. Looks almost like the setting for a mystery, don't you think? We have a grand little library building.



In the next picture, you can see Mike, our assistant librarian and moderator just to the left of the table lamp listening patiently to the guy to the right (me) make a point about Joe Finder's Paranoia. You can tell from the picture that we are a bit of a handful for our moderator-- it is not unusual to have more than one conversation going on at once. We are very animated throughout our meetings.



We meet at the Manchester Public Library, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. And you can read the news story about book clubs here.

Are high tech companies paranoid?

Oh yeah. My personal experience is that competition is fierce and security is strict. In several companies I visited, your escort goes into the rest room with you. This is not true of all companies in any way, but it is real enough.

So I found Joe Finder's Paranoia quite fascinating. In fact, it was one of my best reading experiences in a year.

Finder captured the corporate vocabulary and conversation really well, accurately reflecting the tone of the engineers and senior managers as well as the lower level employees.

Finder's previous novels made use of his occupational background with the CIA to create stories of international intrigue; this was his first book in a corporate setting (succeeding books are also set in a corporate world). Paranoia is a fascinating concoction of corporate espionage. It is way over the top, especially the ending which caught me totally off-guard. Still Finder makes the unbelievable plot totally plausible because the characters and corporate setting are so realistic. As was discussed in our library book club, he is just as successful as Gary Braver is in Flashback. Braver's thriller also "sucks you in" because the science references and nursing home settings are so totally believable. The plot therefore becomes plausible. Just so, Finder's corporate descriptions and high tech references allow you to move into that world with your credibility radar turned low.

Is real-world corporate espionage even a little bit like the book? See what Finder says.

There is also a theme in this book, along the lines of Who can you trust? Who are your real friends? It was not in your face, but it was there and I liked that. I must say that I really related to the relationship of the main character to his obnoxiously cranky and ill father. Well done, and absolutely part of the plot and theme.

I have not read Power Play, Finder's newest book, but I have read Killer Instinct and Company Man. I liked Paranoia the best. And although Killer Instinct won the Thriller Award, three of us (in our library Mystery Book Club) liked Paranoia better.

Also, Finder has an awesome author website with lots of great information.

Brrrrrring! Johnny Dollar.

The Hardy Boys came into my life when I was nine years old, thanks to my older sister, and that got me started on my life long love of mysteries. But you already knew that [or guessed that!]. Still, there was one other influence: old time radio mysteries. It was at that very same time that my aunt, who visited with us for extended months, got me listening to the radio at night (we didn't have a TV). And the show that really had me hooked was called, "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar."

Johnny Dollar had been on the radio since 1949, but by the mid fifties, when I began listening, it was a 15 minute nightly serial that carried through the week. Every night it began with the ringing of a telephone, followed by the hero who would answer by saying his name.

Dollar was a free-lance insurance investigator who managed to get into a large variety of cases, including a great deal of dangerous situations. When I think about it, the 15 minute episode ended with a cliffhanger, just as did the chapters in the Hardy Boys series.

Well, I was thrilled to hear an audio of this old show again. A little searching prompted by my listening to the Mystery Play I-Radio on iTunes led me to a website called Old Time Radio Network that contains thousands of free audio episodes of old radio shows... including Johnny Dollar.

AWESOME!!

Authors Who Make the Rounds

Last night I enjoyed hearing author Liza Ketchum speak about her work of writing stories, mostly for young adults. It's a tough life, I think, making the rounds as an author. She spoke at our library to about 4 adults and 6 children. Our library's mystery book club hosted about eight authors from New England during the course of the year. Often, attendance was poor (about 4-6 people).

But I really enjoyed it. Liza Ketchum involved the children very nicely in a discussion about writing and the need for research (detective work, she called it).

Several of her stories involved a mystery. She described writing a mystery as hard work and requiring careful planning and an outline.

It has been fun to hear different authors approach mystery writing in different ways; some cannot live with an outline, some can't live without it.

Anyway, thanks to Liza and all your fellow writers who share your time with us curious readers.

The Virgin of Small Plains (Due Dec 10)

It's November 10. It's time for the next book, The Virgin of Small Plains. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoyed reading California Girl, the book due for today.

Any comments you want to share about California Girl, please go to this post and add them there. Now that we have finished reading it, I have added my thoughts on the book. How about you? Did you like it?

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Please feel free to add to THIS post any comments you have about The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard. This book is different from many other mysteries in that there is no central "sleuth." Instead, everyone, it seems, is trying to figure out what happened and nobody is talking. Well, I have already read it so I will say no more for now.

One thing for sure, this book has received many awards! Wow!

REMEMBER: No spoiler comments here until after December 10. Then, you can unload all your feelings about the book! So until then, keep you comments, ahhh, mysterious.

Go to the author Nancy Pickard's website by clicking here.

Read Nancy Pickard's Blog by clicking here.

The James Deans - (Due Jan 10) Add Your Comments

I haven't started it yet, but if you have, feel free to post comments (as long as they are not plot spoiling comments!). We can really comment openly without worry about spoilers after Dec 10... CHANGED TO JAN 10!!

---> Sorry if you have already started on this book, but I had to swap it to January, to keep in line with the decision at our library, the non-virtual mirror to this web site. Soooo, it is The Virgin of Small Plains for Dec 10 and The James Deans for Jan 10.

In the meantime take a look at how it feels to be a reader when you are a writer. Great guest blog by Reed Farrel Coleman over at Poe's Deadly Daughters.

Legal Thrillers

Legal thrillers have always been my favorite. I began reading dozens of Perry Mason novels in junior high school (1958-60). When I began to travel in the late 1980s, I began to read mysteries more regularly. I'm sure John Grisham played a part. Anyway... if you like legal thrillers, you gotta read Steve Martini's series featuring attorney Paul Madriani.

I recently finished Double Tap and it was, as always, a pleasure. Martini does a great job of making the preparation for trial and the give and take during trial sound compelling. Through it all is the mystery - who done it? Great surprise ending.

If you have not read any of the books in this series, the book probably works well on its own. On the other hand, you'd do better to start with Compelling Evidence and work your way to Double Tap, the 8th in the series. Every plot is separate, but you get a better feel for the central character, whose career and family circumstances evolve quite a bit along the way. Check the author's web site for a synopsis of the stories.