Reading matters

Most of my recent reading has been on the lighter side: easily digested detective stories to distract from daily events without demanding too much. A major exception is Allison Moorer's book, above. Moorer is a well-regarded singer-songwriter and the sister of another fine musician, Shelby Lynne. In addition to their solid solo work, they collaborated on the album Not Dark Yet, which everyone should listen to. But Blood is only partly about music and sisterhood; the driving force to it is Moorer trying to deal with a family nightmare: her father killed her mother and then himself outside the family home when the girls were in their teens.

Working through events, memories, life before and after, relationships, songs, family and how to understand something that is basically incomprehensible -- Moorer has created a poetic examination of what pain does to the heart and the soul. Moorer has also released a deeply wrought album called Blood, but you do not need to hear it to feel all that the book offers.

On the escapist side of my reading are the novels of Kathy Reichs, creator of Temperance Brennan, the forensic anthropologist and sleuth. She was turned into a very different character for the TV series Bones, which was still enjoyable though more melodramatic than the complex (in plot and character) novels. The latest of those is A Conspiracy of Bones, the first Brennan tale in some time, and a highly charged one, Brennan has to cope with professional and personal changes while deep-diving into a case that keeps twisting and twisting -- even after the bad guys have been found out. It's more intense than a lot of previous Brennan novels, because Brennan herself is in an intense state, and quite good because of the difference in tone. Reichs habitually adds an afterword to her novels talking about her creative process, and if you are new to her books you still want to read the afterword in this one; it adds weight to the happenings on the fictional side.

I started the TV series Briarpatch, hesitated to continue (the David Lynch vibe was a bit much), then was startled to see that it was based on a book by Ross Thomas. In the 1980s I read just about every Thomas novel I could find; they were smart and cynical, knowing about government and subterfuge and human weakness, and as adept at character as storytelling. Thomas died in 1995 and apparently there was a period when his books went out of print. Reissues finally appeared some years ago, with the addition of introductions by friends/colleagues/admirers: Donald E. Westlake, Sarah Paretsky and others. (There are also books Thomas wrote as Oliver Bleeck,) I dipped back into his books. OK, I reread three of them: The Cold War Swap, Out on the Rim and The Fourth Durango. They were as good as I remembered. 

I am as sure a sucker as anyone when it comes to a bargain, especially for free books. Unfortunately, they are often worth no more than the price. But I was not disappointed by Grave Designs, the first in a series of mysteries by Michael A. Kahn with the central character a lawyer named Rachel Gold. It was good enough that I paid a couple of dollars for the second one, Death Benefits, and I may keep going. (The 11th novel in the series comes out in April.) They're not on the level of Reichs or Thomas (or Laura Lippman, or Megan Abbott ...) but they're reasonably entertaining.

Not that I always ask much from a book. Looking for something to read before long airport layovers recently, I tried The Con Job, a novel derived from the con-game TV series Leverage. It is the first of three novels tied to the series, each credited to a different author, and a decent effort. The book understands the TV characters well, especially Hardison and Parker, and puts them in a fun setting: Comic-Con. It made the airport wait bearable.