Review by New York Times Review
if I were in jail, George Pelecanos would be on my reading list, right up there with James Lee Burke and Elmore Leonard, who are also favorites of the inmates in THE MAN WHO CAME UPTOWN (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $27). The guys in the general population at the Washington, D.C., jail also go for lady authors, thanks to Anna Kaplan, a roaming librarian the inmates call "Miss Anna." One loyal client, Michael Hudson, emerges from behind bars as a bona fide bibliophile. ("When he read a book, he was not locked up. He was free.") Back on the outside, Michael resolves to continue his reading habit, applying for his first library card, checking out some books and declaring himself "happy." But he owes people, and in this neighborhood promises and paybacks mean something. So when his major debtor needs a getaway driver for a robbery, Michael is his go-to guy. This is the way good people often get corrupted in Pelecanos's novels, paying their dues for favors received. They're also caught when they get greedy - like a private investigator named Phil Ornazian. Phil has a promising assignment tracking down the wild kids from D.C. who crashed a party in Potomac, Md., raped the teenage hostess and stole her mother's $50,000 bracelet. But then he gets tired of working for chump change and thinks he could be a big-time crook. Pelecanos's characters are prone to that kind of mistake, which is what makes them so human and so doomed. This is an author who writes with the steady hand of a man who knows he's driving a cool set of wheels and respects his own mechanical skills. And that reminds us of another thing about a Pelecanos novel: You'll never get lost. His precise descriptions of Washington neighborhoods read as if they were being dictated by someone driving a fast car, maybe a muscle car, something a teenager would look twice at. Or steal. even IN peacetime, Bess Crawford, the intrepid battlefield nurse in Charles Todd's World War I-era mysteries, finds herself in situations as dire as those in any combat zone. "The war had ended, but not the suffering," she reflects, thinking of the wounded veterans now in her care. "No conquering heroes, these men. No victory parades for them." Rather, a 24-hour suicide watch. In A FORGOTTEN PLACE (Morrow, $27.99), Bess travels to a Godforsaken Welsh mining village on the Bristol Channel to check on one such veteran, Capt. Hugh Williams, an amputee racked by anger and despair. There she encounters yet another disaster, a rock slide that buries three cottages and their inhabitants under a wave of stones and mud. Stranded, Bess is put up by the captain and his attractive widowed sister-in-law, only to find herself confronted with the noxious atmosphere of a town that suspects Williams of having murdered his own brother. Lest readers succumb to the thick aura of calamity that clings to this sad story, Todd offers up charming scenes of focal life, including the spring lambing. Things in the village get a bit bloody, but, as far as I can tell, none of the little lambs is murdered. time was, the searches in many mystery novels involved lost or stolen items like emerald necklaces and state secrets. These days, sleuths all seem to be in pursuit of their identities. One such is Jessie Sloane, the neurasthenic heroine of Mary Kubica's WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT (Park Row, $26.99), who hasn't been able to sleep for eight days - or is it nine? As she keeps a tense death watch on her mother, Eden, Jessie fears that Eden might die without revealing who Jessie's father was. Eden's own story, told in chapters set 20 years in the past, focuses on her obsessive attempts to have a child and is far more moving than the alternating chapters devoted to her daughter's selfabsorbed quest. "I'm nothing," Eden berates herself, "if not a mother." What will happen when she realizes "I've become an addict really" and that children "are my fix"? CHRISTOPHER (KIT) COBB is an American war correspondent on assignment in France in 1915. In Robert Olen Butler's taut new thriller, PARIS IN THE DARK (Mysterious Press, $26), Kit is researching a feature about American civilians who volunteered to drive ambulances. That's a dangerous job in itself, taking him close to the front lines, but Kit is also a government agent, on the lookout for saboteurs among the ranks of refugees returning to Paris. Kit isn't infallible, wasting all kinds of time following a suspicious gent who turns out to be a betrayed husband in pursuit of his wife and her lover. Yet his adventures ensnare us in that cobwebbed state of mind when even the most innocent exchanges between strangers can acquire an ominous tone. Consider that boy talking about the pigs and chickens on his father's farm: Could he be stockpiling dynamite? Kit is given his orders - "Go find him and quietly kill him" - and sees plenty of action. Best, though, is Butler's feel for the black-andwhite-movie atmospherics of a war zone after hours: It's a thrill to follow Kit to German hangouts like Le Rouge et le Noir, where a password will get you in, but there's no guarantee you'll get out. Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
This fifth stand-alone psychological thriller (after Every Last Lie, 2017) from New York Times best-selling author Kubica will keep readers riveted as they witness the unraveling of the lives of two women, one in the present, the other in the past. Jessie Sloane is struggling to build a new life after years of being sole caregiver to her mother through a protracted and ultimately terminal illness. Her disorientation, heightened by chronic insomnia, turns into sheer panic and hallucinatory mania when she applies for college, only to learn that her Social Security number belongs to a deceased three-year-old. Her mother's story, set 20 years earlier, explains why her life had been so secretive that Jessie knows nothing about her mother's past, nor even her father's name. The ending brings a stunning ironic twist, with a resolution that some readers may find disconcerting. Overall, though, this intensely moving novel about identity and deceit is strongly recommended for anyone who has been drawn to the current wave of Girl sagas.--Jane Murphy Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Jessie Sloane, the chief narrator of this lackluster psychological thriller from bestseller Kubica (Every Last Lie), spends her teen years caring for her mother, Eden, until Eden dies from cancer at their home in Chicago. Numb with grief, insomniac Jessie tries to get on with her life by applying to a community college, but a college official informs her that her Social Security number belongs to a girl who died 17 years earlier. Jessie never knew who her father was, nor does she have a birth certificate or a driver's license, so trying to find her identity seems insurmountable. As Jessie's insomnia worsens, she makes one bad decision after another. Flashbacks from Eden's viewpoint show that she and her husband, Aaron, were loving newlyweds, but their marriage soured when Eden became consumed with having a baby. Jessie's inability to tell reality from illusion quickly becomes tiresome, as does Eden and Aaron's story. Eden's account plods to a disappointing finale. Kubica fans will hope for a return to form next time. Agent: Rachael Dillon Fried, Greenburger Assoc. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Her mother's cancer returned when Jessie Sloane was 15, and for the next six years, Jessie cared for her. After Jessie's mother dies, her financial aid application is rejected because her social security number belongs to a dead girl with her name. Jessie needs to find out who she is. She has always longed to know who her father was, so maybe she'll learn his identity as well. Jessie and her mother had lived a severely sequestered life for reasons only her mother knew. Owing to her insomnia, Jessie hasn't slept in days, and she can no longer discern what's real from what isn't. More than 20 years earlier, Eden Sloane had wanted a baby so badly that she would risk anything, do anything to get one. Journal entries relate just how much she sacrificed to achieve that goal. VERDICT Fans of Kubica (Don't You Cry; The Good Girl) will enjoy this exploration of the timely topic of child identity theft. With the author's trademark alternating story lines, this novel tugs at readers' heartstrings, arouses their ire, and provokes them before the final twist. [See Prepub Alert, 3/26/18.]-Elizabeth Masterson, Mecklenburg Cty. Jail Lib., Charlotte, NC © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
When Jessie Sloane's mother, Eden, dies of cancer, Jessie is left rudderless. Then she discovers she might not be the person she thought she was.Jessie never knew her father, and she can't bear to live in the house that she shared with Eden, so she puts it on the market. When she applies to community college, she gets a call with the alarming news that a death certificate was filed 17 years ago with her name and social security number on it. She'll need to get a copy of her social security card, but without a birth certificate or driver's licenseshe doesn't driveit's nearly impossible, and when a clerk takes pity on her and does a search, no records are found. It's a vicious circle, and it hampers her ability to find an apartment, although she does eventually find a place in a small carriage house she rents from reclusive widow Ms. Geissler. Unfortunately, in addition to the question of her identity, she's got a more pressing problem: Jessie has insomnia, and as the days pass and she doesn't sleep, she begins to hear and see things, eventually wondering how long she can go without sleep before it kills her. Woven with Jessie's first-person narrative is Eden's tale, beginning 20 years ago in 1996 when she's only 28. She and her husband, Aaron, are crazy in love and desperately hope for a child, but as time passes and they don't conceive, they begin trying more aggressive, and more expensive, methods. Eden's obsession builds to a fever pitch, threatening to tear her and Aaron apart. Jessie's story, an effective study of grief, nightmarishly builds to its own fever pitch, and Kubica peppers her narrative with creepy, surreal touches that will have readers questioning reality right along with Jessie. Eden's story, on the other hand, poignantly examines what it's like to want a child so badly that you'll do anything to have one. Can Jessie find out who she really is before it's too late? It all leads to a denouement that isn't very surprising, but a lesser writer might not have been able to pull off the final twist.Kubica is a helluva storyteller, and while this doesn't quite equal her best efforts, it's still pretty darn good. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
