Nov
2014

A Test of Wills by Charles Todd

categories: Review

testofwills

HISTORICAL FICTION/MYSTERY

Title: A Test of Wills
Author: Charles Todd
Publisher: St. Martin’s, 1996
Series: Inspector Rutledge, Book 1

THE BOOK: In this series of historical mysteries set in post-WWI England, the protagonist is a Scotland Yard detective who solves crimes despite being nearly crippled with shell shock. Charles Todd’s Inspector Ian Rutledge is one of the great characters of British crime fiction. He fought in the trenches of WWI France, and came back a shattered man, carrying the guilt of what he had seen in the war. The twist is that his guilt takes form as a very convincing delusion. Rutledge hears the voice of a man who died under his command. This voice, a Scottish officer called Hamish MacLeod, serves as Rutledge’s conscience. It is also the voice of his intuition, which he fears he lost in the war.  But the hook for mystery fans is that Rutledge is trying to pick up his work as an Inspector with Scotland Yard. (more…)


Oct
2014

Ghost Stories

categories: Featured Microgenre

Even before I became a fan of the horror genre (thanks in large part to my three years judging the Reading List Award), I always loved a good ghost story.  Creepy and scary – without usually being gory or bloody – they remain a favorite horror monster.  And while there are tons of excellent ghosts in horror proper, you can find them in a lot of other genres as well.  Here are some of my favorites, in no particular order:

   The Restorer by Amanda Stevens

For me, this is a perfect combination of urban fantasy, romance and spooky horror.  Start with the heroine’s profession and nickname: she restores old cemeteries and is known as the Graveyard Queen.  Now this would, on the surface, be a pretty stupid career for our heroine Amelia Gray, who is from a family especially susceptible to ghosts.  He father taught her to never acknowledge a ghost, or it could torment you forever. But she loves her job, drawn to the beauty of the old graveyards of the South. When she meets Detective John Devlin over a dead body (of the fresh kind) in a cemetery she is restoring in Charleston, she knows she should keep her distance from the man, who is haunted by the ghost of his dead wife. But they end up working together as more people are killed in Charleston. The sequels never captured the magic of this one, unfortunately.  Very gothic, and very good. (more…)


Oct
2014

Genre Blend New Releases – November 2014

categories: New Releases

Every month there is another batch of new books that don’t fit neatly into one genre. Here are some of the genreblended books coming out in November 2014.  Heading into the slow period of publishing there are still plenty of genre blends to look forward to next month. Genres are listed in my best estimation as to the order of prominence to the story. For example, if the first genre listed is SF, that is probably the first audience for the book. What are you most looking foward to?

              

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Oct
2014

Capers and Heists: SF and Fantasy

categories: Featured Blend

As you may have noticed from the past few days, I love a good heist/caper.  They have the excitement of a mystery but flipped around from a whole new perspective. Let’s face it, solving crimes is slow, painstaking work with long hours, low pay, and lots of paperwork. Committing crimes — now that sounds like a lot more fun. Capers and heist stories show up in just about every genre, bringing adventure and excitement with them. Fantasy and Science Fiction both have a long history of thief heroes.  Hell, Bilbo Baggins is a thief! From some long-term series with criminal anti-heroes to books where characters unexpectedly cross the line to the dark side, to mercenaries who aren’t too picky about the jobs they take – there’s a lot to choose from when you look at capers and heists in speculative fiction.

SCIENCE FICTION


The Warrior’s Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold

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Oct
2014

Capers and Heists: Crime Books

categories: Featured Blend

How much do I love criminal heroes? The scruffy lawbreakers, the talented thieves,  the charming con men and women? They make a great change from traditional mystery law enforcement heroes.  The plots of capers and heists, like the mystery novel, involve a crime.  But instead of trying to solve the crime, in the heist plot (and often the caper as well) the reader is rooting for the criminal to get away with their nefarious schemes.  They can blend mystery and suspense, or mystery and humor, and I love it when they blend in a romance on top of all the hijinks.  While I think the heist plot works even better in the movies (see yesterday’s post!) due to medium’s ability to convey visually the tension and intricate scenarios that would take a lot more time to paint with words, there are quite a few authors who write heist stories that are almost as gripping as anything put on film. Here are some of the best crime novels where criminals take the spotlight: (more…)


Oct
2014

Capers and Heists: The Movies

categories: Featured Blend, Films

Although I love traditional mysteries with their law abiding, law enforcing heroes and heroines, I admit to having a soft spot for the crime stories that flip the hero paradigm around and put the law breakers into the spotlight.  Still under the umbrella of crime fiction, these stories focus on the successful achievement of a criminal undertaking rather than preventing a crime or catching the criminal.  Charming rogues, loveable rulebreakers, and morally ambiguous anti-heroes are my catnip.  In both capers and heists, much of the appeal is related to characters.  You have to like these characters (or at least be interested by them) in order to follow them to the dark side.  It helps that the characters in a caper or heist is often funny and smarter than everyone around them.  The other big appeal is plot, of course, as they tend to be intricately planned schemes that reward careful attention and showcase the clever ingenuity of the lawbreakers.   Two overlapping stories that explore stories that flirt with (or fully embrace) the criminal side of the mystery line are capers and heist stories. (more…)


Oct
2014

Horror for Beginners

categories: Featured Blend

I am sure there are many readers who would swear on a stack on bibles that they don’t read horror, but who might read certain horror that sneaks onto the bestseller lists or gets literary love.  I thought, in honor of Halloween and All Hallow’s Read (you know– the super-fantastic tradition that Neil Gaiman invented where everyone gives someone a scary book for Halloween?), I would highlight some books that are fantastic horror novels that for one reason or another are read far beyond the normal genre audience for horror.  Sometimes these are books by well-respected literary novelists who are dabbling in a darker hue; sometimes they are subtle horror novels that skirts the edges of the genre. They might be as scary as anything Stephen King ever penned, but they sit on our “literature” shelves rather than in the horror ghetto.  These scary books have gotten a lot of critical love and might be just the thing to give someone who doesn’t think they read horror. (more…)


Oct
2014

New Fall TV Genre Benders

categories: TV

As a break from all the books, I thought I would round-up some of the new TV shows this fall that combine genres.  In my book The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Blends, I have a whole chapter on blends in other formats, including lots of great examples of blends on TV. As a readers’ advisory librarian, asking what TV shows a person likes is a great icebreaker for working with readers not used to articulating what kinds of books they like to read.  Folks who like genre blending in their TV might also like it in books, movies, comics, etc. But increasingly, librarians need to be comfortable helping people not only find books to read, but should also be prepared to help patrons find TV and movies they might like in our DVD collections. It might not be cool in the book world to admit you like TV, but I am unabashedly fond of a lot of shows on TV these day. TV can be a great medium for genre blending, as the episodic nature of the format gives creators lots of opportunities to play with different storytelling styles. So I watch a lot of TV, in between all the book reading, and these are my picks for new shows that are doing interesting things with genre.

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Oct
2014

The Troupe by Robert Jackson Bennett

categories: Review

troupe

FANTASY/HORROR/HISTORICAL FICTION

TITLE: The Troupe
AUTHOR: Robert Jackson Bennett
PUBLISHER: Orbit, 2011

THE BOOK: In an undefined turn-of-the-last-century time when vaudeville was still going strong, we meet young George Carole, a piano player at a small Vaudeville theatre in the middle of America somewhere/nowhere. Sixteen-year-old George is working at Otterman’s theatre for only one reason:  he hopes his father will play there someday so he can finally meet the man. But when he does finally track down his father’s vaudevillian troupe, nothing goes as planned.  His father, Hieronymus Silenus, is involved in something bigger and scarier than a simple entertainment and when George see the Silenus troupe play, his life is changed forever. Between the creepy puppet act, the tantalising dancing of the beautiful Colette, and the mesmerizing song that ends the act, George is fascinated.  But it is his encounter after the show with a spooky gray man who sucks all the light out of the world around him that decides George to sign on with the Troupe. Because Silenus is somehow using his show to battle back all the evil of the world.  Or is he? (more…)