Best I've read in years

Dark, gritty, action-filled, and fast. This one got me on page one and I could not stop reading it. Great plotting, good story, excellent dialog, Charlie Newton got it right the very first time (eighth novel, first published.) It rolls along better than a movie.

I'll be passing this one on to my mystery reading friends, Patti Black has a story to tell. This first novel does not end as though it is the first in a series but if Charlie Newton is asking opinions, my vote is for more.

What about those teens at the library?

I think this is a question some regular library users might be asking at the dinner table. Recently a couple of teens caused some heads to turn when they threw fist-sized chunks of concrete into the building from outside, through open front doors. The two boys in question had been asked to leave the building and library property because of a loud and ongoing disturbance in the building. Their response, once outside the building was to throw these potentially damaging chunks of concrete into the building. Luckily no one was hit by the objects. This is perhaps the low-point in dozens and dozens of difficult confrontations with teens over maintaining order in the library and protecting library property from damage.

Over the course of our time in our new building we have welcomed people from all corners of the Independence community to the library. Most are happy with what they find and use the facility in a reasonable manner but not all. The police have been called to the library multiple times to help with the orderly removal of groups of teens when events and emotions escalated to a level where physical harm seemed close at hand.

Positive and constructive efforts to engage teens have been fruitless.

Some regular library users are reluctant to come to the library because of the uproar that may breakout as teens act out unruly behavior. I think we have lost some customers who have been intimidated by them.

In spite of our tight funding I am asking the Library Board to authorize me to hire security guards to help protect the public, library staff, and library property from those who are unable to control themselves. What a time we live in.

Sandra Dallas

Want a good book? Try Sandra Dallas she writes a good story. I picked up Tallgrass when it came through on the new book cart. In Tallgrass, Dallas sets the novel during WWII in eastern Colorado at a Japanese internment camp which I had not known existed. A child from the camp is murdered and a farm girl from near the camp tells us the story of what happens. Part historical novel and part mystery, the story is engaging, the characters well developed, and the plot kept me turning the pages and wanting to read more by Dallas.



I looked to our fiction shelves to see what we had and I was pleasantly surprised to find a good selection of well-circulated books. I have no excuse for missing this interesting author except that I keep my interest in mysteries at the forefront of my reading priorities.


Jane Smiley called Dallas "A quintessential American voice."


In reverse order, her novels are:

• Tallgrass
• New Mercies
• The Chili Queen
• Alice's Tulips
• The Diary of Mattie Spencer
• The Persian Pickle Club
• Buster's Midnight Cafe

Dallas has character references between several of her books which makes for an interesting link between them. She doesn't use the same characters over and over, but the references are to earlier times and to the children of earlier characters - it is fun to watch for them as one moves through the books. Quilting is another element in her books and she makes it interesting. She has an excellent ear for dialog, and her historical detail rings true. My favorite is probably The Diary of Mattie Spencer and I have passed my recommendation on Dallas along to many readers.


My experience was that once I began one of these books I couldn't wait to get back to the story and I was sorry to have it end. You may enjoy them.

Six word novel, fifty word explanation

Attempting a six word novel is a seductive idea to which I yield:

• Turning sixty-five, adulthood dangerously near.
• Saigon. Smell of burning diesel fish.

One blogger, Bookie, bent the idea and came up with offering six word summaries or descriptions of novels she had read, with amusing and insightful entries.

• Year of Wonders - The plague sucks. Screw the minister.

• Life of Pi - I was lost at sea with a tiger. or was I?

GreasyGranma offered these.

• Big-Bang, Little Star
  Flash in the pan.
• Love Forever.
  Forgotten, Never.
  You're Clever.

Give it a shot and post to Comments.

I was so happy!

Someone sent me a photograph of the parade in downtown Lawrence celebrating the return of the 2008 NCAA Basketball Champion Team, the University of Kansas Jayhawks.

What a sight!

What a game!

What a series!

A mystery in black and white

Ok, here's the hook, the first-ever bank heist in North Korea with one of the robbers mowed down in the street outside the bank by an off-course bus, but wait, there is no body, and what about the beautiful Kazakh bank manager. Two weeks after the heist, the case lands on the desk of Inspector O, (but do THEY really want it solved, or not?) O ponders the corundum as he again considers plans for a never to be built book shelf for his office. Ok, the pace is slow and things are seldom as they seem but it is North Korea after all.

This is a solid proceedural written by James Church, who claims to have been an intelligence agent who now uses a pseudonym. At first glance I might have passed on this one but the pace and language of the first few pages sucked me in and I enjoyed it.

This is the second Inspector O mystery. The first was A Corpse in the Koryo, released in 2006. Glenn Kessler reviewed this one for The Washington Post and wrote:

"But the book has also caused a stir among Asia specialists because it offers an unusually nuanced and detailed portrait of one of the most closed societies on Earth -- North Korea. Much like Martin Cruz Smith's novel "Gorky Park," which depicted life in the Soviet Union in the early 1980s through the eyes of police inspector, "A Corpse on the Koryo" provides a vivid window into a mysterious country through the perspective of its primary character -- Inspector O."


I think the point he makes about the book is why I took to Hidden Moon, it was a peek into one of the most closed societies in modern times.

Remember Marshall McLuhan?

Back in the 1960's, The Medium is the Massage was hot and all the talk. If you could work a McLuhan quote into a college paper it was guaranteed an A. Here are a few I found on the Internet. His earlier The Gutenberg Galaxy was pioneering in the fields of oral culture, print culture, and media studies. (Wikipedia)

We owe Marshall McLuhan for the phrases, "global village," and "surfing," ("...to refer to rapid, irregular and multi directional movement through a heterogeneous body of documents or knowledge.") (Wikipedia)

He is very quotable ...

• The story of modern America begins with the discovery of the white man by The Indians.

• Money is the poor man’s credit card.

• We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.

• Spaceship earth is still operated by railway conductors, just as NASA is managed by men with Newtonian goals.

• The road is our major architectural form.

• Today the business of business is becoming the constant invention of new business.

• All advertising advertises advertising.

• The answers are always inside the problem, not outside.

• Politics offers yesterday’s answers to today’s questions.

• Men on frontiers, whether of time or space, abandon their previous identities. Neighborhood gives identity. Frontiers snatch it away.

• “I may be wrong, but I’m never in doubt.”

• I don't know who discovered water but it certainly wasn't a fish.
  

• " ... as we transfer our whole being to the data bank, privacy will become a ghost or echo of its former self and what remains of community will disappear."

I would love to have heard his take on the "information" we are supplied by the government and the major news organizations today.

Poetry Alive!®

At 4:00, Tuesday, April 1, 2008, the touring troupe of Poetry Alive!® will again bring their performance skill to our library. The performance is a fun one and might jump-start an interest in poetry in any of the adults and children who attend.

This is what they have to say about themselves:

WHAT IS UNIQUE ABOUT POETRY ALIVE?

We are a Poetry Company. Using the rich heritage of the bardic tradition of long ago, we bring high-intensity poetry performances into the classroom. The Poetry Alive! actors have memorized hundreds of poems—from the classics to the popular to the contemporary.

Those poems, presented in engaging and memorable ways, become the connection to enhanced reading and writing skills. In short, we bring poetry to life, by engaging students to the learning process. Poetry Alive! has become the reading, writing and performing connection.

Be there or be square.

A single, famous book each

Help me out here. Offer up the names of authors who are known for a single work that became famous and who never published another book. Several come to mind.

• Anna Sewell wrote Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse, but nothing else that was published. According to Ron Charles there were 50 million copies published. According to Wikipedia Sewell wrote Black Beauty in the last years of her life while confined as an invalid. She died five months after publication, but long enough to see the book succeed.

• To Kill A Mockingbird was Harper Lee's only novel. She is rumored to have a couple of other things written but not published. The film staring Gregory Peck and adapted by Horton Foote, is a perennial favorite and an Oscar winner for Peck. I use this book as the 'starter' for book discussion groups as it seems easy for most people to relate to and to talk about. The story resonates for nearly everyone for some reason. Lee is also known as the research assistant to Truman Capote during the time he wrote In Cold Blood although he did not credit her for that.

• Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell has sales of about 28 million copies and is the only novel published by Mitchell in her lifetime. The book won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for literature and won a record number of Oscars.

Do you know of any other entries in this odd category?

The Fifth In A Series of Mysteries

Bill Powell, writing in Time's The China Blog, recommends Red Mandarin Dress and compares Qiu Xiaolong's Inspector Chen to Martin Cruz Smith's Arkday Renko stories.

Red Mandarin Dress, An Inspector Chen Novel by Qiu Xiaolong is now on the shelves. It is the fifth book featuring Inspector Chen and set in 1990's Shanghai. The series progression has been:

• Death of a Red Heroine (2000)
• A Loyal Character Dancer* (2002)
• When Red is Black (2004)
• A Case of Two Cities (2006)
• Red Mandarin Dress* (2007)

* Owned by Independence Public Library

Being Chinese and having been born in China, Qiu Xiaolong has the chops to pull back the curtain and reveal to us the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution and show us the society that has resulted. Although he now lives and writes in St. Louis, the author was born and raised in Shanghai. As Powell points out in The China Blog, Qiu is writing in English which is his second language.

The Wall Street Journal named his first book, Death of a Red Heroine (2000) one of the five best political novels of all time. Their listing was as follows:

1. The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope (1876)
2. Shelley's Heart by Charles McCarry(1995)
3. Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong (2000)
4. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (1941)
5. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)

This list is not of my making and is going to force me to take up some dusty books to see what I have missed. At any rate, they have put this newcomer in heady company with his first outing. The novel was also picked as an Edgar Winner for a first novel.

I apologize for letting this one slip by me until now. I for one, look forward to a new (to me) author. We will see about picking up the three that we do not own at this time.

This interview features Qiu Xiaolong talking about Red Mandarin Dress:

Guest Blogger Robin Acker, M.D.

If Amelia Earhart was alive today, she could only be proud that a recent survey (USA Today, Feb. 4, 2008) of teenagers from the 50 states named her the 6^th most famous American (not counting Presidents) since the days of Columbus.

Now more than 70 years after her disappearance, researchers may be closing in on the final whereabouts of Earhart and the Lockheed Electra in which she was lost.

Since her disappearance in 1937, thoughts of Earhart’s last hours have been the focus of numerous articles, books and movies. Gradually, the theories have coalesced into three main groups:

1. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, ditched their plane in the sea and floated some time before drowning. This is the official opinion of the US Navy.
2. Earhart managed to land somewhere, but she and Noonan were never found and they subsequently expired.
3. Whether after ditching in the sea or finding land, Earhart and Noonan were captured by Japanese soldiers, and died either due to dysentery or by execution.

Although theories one and three seem to have been the most popular, I, and a group to which I belong (TIGHAR), believe that the evidence points most strongly to the second.

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery got into the “Earhart game” (as Barney Fife might have put it) a little more than a year after it was formed in 1987. The founder, Ric Gillespie, initially believed that there was no hard evidence that could justify a search for Earhart and her plane. But when two members of TIGHAR, knowledgeable of “old school” celestial navigation, told Gillespie the implications of her final radio transmissions, the head of TIGHAR was hooked.

For myself, I learned of Earhart when I was 10 years old in 1966, growing up in a town of about 4,000 in central California. Though I wasn’t in an enrichment class, we were blessed with a teacher who was indeed gifted. She encouraged my interest, which gripped me for years, but by April, 2007 had grown dormant. Dormant, that is, right up until my wife casually mentioned one day, “There’s something here in the news about Amelia Earhart.”

A few weeks later, I found myself the team physician on TIGHAR’s fifth major expedition to tiny, uninhabited Nikumaroro of the Kiribati nation, doctoring an epidemic of seasickness on the five-day motor-sail voyage to the atoll, a piece of land almost directly on Earhart and Fred Noonan’s last described line of position, some 300 miles southeast of their intended destination of Howland Island. Niku is just as hot as one would expect from a lava rock baking just 4 degrees south of the equator.

Why do we believe Earhart and Noonan died on Nikumaroro? Both Gillespie and Thomas H. King, chief archaeologist of TIGHAR, have written books that lay out the evidence quite nicely (Finding Amelia and Amelia Earhart’s Shoes, respectively). The notion that Earhart and Noonan ditched in the ocean doesn’t stand up to the fact that well-documented radio broadcasts received in the days after her loss virtually had to come from Earhart, whose plane was incapable of broadcasting from water. And while anecdotes have indicated a Japanese military capture, Earhart’s last transmissions to Howland were so strong that Coast Guardsmen ran out of the radio shack to look up in the sky, a circumstance unexplainable if the Electra was more than a thousand miles away.

Pursuing a site first explored on earlier trips, in 2007 we continued work on a section that appears to match contemporary colonial records of a skeleton discovery in 1940. The section, stained by the detritus of multiple campfires, has borne evidence of one or more castaways, including American-manufactured bottles from the 1930s, clumsily opened clams, and now the most recently confirmed substance--early 20^th century cosmetic.

As laboratory testing continues on other items found on the island in 2007, I and other TIGHAR members have our fingers crossed for a major breakthrough that could lead to the mystery’s resolution, and finally bring Earhart and Noonan home.

Thanks Robin for this fascinating article on your Amelia Earhart experience.

Something about the Amelia Earhart story resonates with many people. The above story came to me out of the earlier blog postings about our Friend's annual meeting program of Ann Birney portraying Amelia Earhart. Interest in the story of Amelia Earhart will continue. -- Pete

The Hearts of Horses

Every once in a while I come across a plain, good story. This book is one of those where I recognized early on that it is going to end long before I have had my fill of the characters and the story.

Molly Gloss has written four or five earlier books, some juvenile or intermediate and some stories and poems. Her latest, The Hearts of Horses is described on Gloss's website thusly:

In the winter of 1917 many of the young ranch hands in this remote Eastern Oregon county have been called away to war. When 19-year-old Martha Lessen shows up at George Bliss's doorstep looking for work breaking horses, George glimpses beneath her showy rodeo costume a shy young woman with a serious knowledge of horses, and he hires her on. Martha's unusual, quiet way of breaking horses soon wins her additional work among several of George Bliss's neighbors, and over the course of the winter she helps out a German family whose wagon and horses have tipped off a narrow road into a ravine; she gentles a horse for a man who knows he is dying—a last gift to his young son; and she clashes with a hired hand who has been abusing horses with casual cruelty. Against the backdrop of a horrifying modern war, Martha gradually comes to feel enveloped by a sense of community and family she's never had before. And eventually, against her best intentions to lead a solitary cowboy life, she falls in love.

Molly Gloss lives in Portland, Oregon and has won numerous literary awards. Her book Wild Life was chosen as the 2002 selection for, "What if all Seattle read the same book?"

Our library currently owns:

• The Hearts of Horses (2007)
• Jump Off Creek (1989)

I will look into purchasing more of her work.

The loss of downtown merchants

DeFever-Osborn Rexall Drug Store closed last month. There was a wildfire rumor then notice in the afternoon Independence Daily Reporter. Steve DeFever gave employees one week notice that the store was to close. Steve sold the store to Walgreen's so they could acquire his prescription files and customers. The historic orange neon sign for the store projected 90 degrees from the building and would be seen from both direction on Penn Avenue for many years. It is now dark.


When I visited Independence to be interviewed for the library director's position my son visited with me to access prospects and my staying power moving from metropolitan Palm Beach County Florida to small-town Kansas. The first impression we both had as we drove into town that August of 2001 was positive, bolstered in-part by the busy downtown commercial district. After dinner with the library board and selection committee at John's Kitchen and Pub, I met with them again the next afternoon. At noon that day, my son and I had gone to the lunch counter at DeFever-Osborn Drug Store for soup and sandwiches.

The drug store bustled both at the prescription counter and at the lunch counter. A dozen stools faced what had started as a soda fountain before 'pop' came in cans and teenagers ordered cherry-limeades that came in glasses not styrofoam cups from Sonic Drive-In. There were two or three wooden booths between the lunch counter and the prescription counter for coffee drinkers and newspaper readers. Steve had hung lots of historic photographs in the store and he actually had a better collection than the library. I borrowed a couple from him to copy for our files.

I was in Walgreen's the other day to get a prescription and saw Steve working there behind the counter as I waited. I won't say that I liked the line and the wait. I think I liked looking at the old photos at the old store better.

Across the street from DeFever-Osborn was Calvert's Department Store. They announced their closing in the same article that announced the drug store closing. I may write more about that later.


So, in one month two downtown landmark stores closed. It is tough for merchants in small towns as Walmart and city malls take customers away.

Robert B. Parker talks about his books

He is six books ahead of publication, a good interview.



His latest, Stranger in Paradise, is a Jesse Stone and is a good story, made for a TV movie. Tom Selleck does a good job in these moody procedurals to my taste. This is the eighth novel Parker has written using the Jesse Stone character. They are:

• Night Passage (1997)
• Trouble in Paradise (1998)
• Death in Paradise (2001)
• Stone Cold (2003)
• Sea Change (2006)
• Blue Screen (2006) *
  
• High Profile (2007) *
  
• Stranger in Paradise (2008)

Adding to the fun, Parker includes Sunny Randall in Blue Screen and High Profile and promises to include her in future efforts.

Explaining the book to a new user ...

It is obvious that I spend too many evenings at the computer. The evidence is clear. Anyway, it's my life and the results can be fascinating. I offer the following as proof. (Thanks Stumbleupon.com.)

How cool is this?

Guest Blogger Kim Alden Mallin, M.D.

I was disappointed to find out that G. M. Ford's latest book Nameless Night was not part of his Frank Corso series. Over the years, I have come to enjoy the rogue journalist with his strong but sometimes misguided sense of justice and his photojournalist partner, Meg Dougherty (who also happens to be bizarrely tattooed over most of her body) ... but that's another story. Read the books.

Ford has written two series.

• Who in Hell is Wanda Fuca? introduced the Leo Waterman series about a bumbling, smart-mouth, rumpled Seattle private eye described as, "...the most likable private eye to make the scene since Travis McGee." In 2000, the sixth and last book of the series, The Deader the Better was published.

• Fury, the first of the Frank Corso series, appeared in 2002. In it a respected New York Times journalist (Corso) falls from grace and is booted from The Times after a highly publicized libel case. Now a renegade outcast, he ends up in Seattle where he becomes the "Harry Bosch of the Pacific Northwest." Blown Away, the Sixth and most recent Corso novel was based on an actual 2003 unsolved case and revolves around a series of deadly bank robberies.

Nameless Night is Ford's first stand-alone novel and is a new twist on an old premise ... amnesia. Kirkus Reviews writes:

A virtual sleepwalker for seven years wakes to a murderous reality. As a ward of the state, Paul Hardy has been living with a dozen other physically or emotionally impaired adults. Paul Hardy isn't his real name ... Who he is, or was, is a mystery, largely because he's never been known to utter so much as a syllable ... Hospitalized after being hit by a car, he ends up getting ... a new face along with a new set of synapses. And now he remembers a name: Wesley Allen Howard. Is it his ...? Suddenly, ill-intentioned men arise from a variety of alphabet agencies, and if he wants to stay alive, the ex-Paul Hardy had better find out why in a hurry. Yes, it's the old amnesia gimmick, but Ford (Blown Away, 2007, etc.) is such an ingratinting storyteller that you may well find yourself beguiled.

I found it a fast-paced and interesting read, but not exactly beguiling. I hope Corso returns soon.

I did find an interesting on-line interview with G. M. Ford Here, in which he talks about fulfilling his middle-aged dream of becoming a fulltime novelist and how he "didn't even have to endure the agony of rejected manuscripts or involuntary penury to achieve that position. He sold the first book he ever wrote within a year." I hate him. I have endured the agone of at least 100 rejection letters so far. Oh well, James Lee Burke's The Lost Get Back Boogie received 111 rejection letters, and John Grisham got 28 for A Time to Kill. I'm in good company.

Standing Room Only

Last night at the Annual Meeting of our Friends there was a SRO crowd, we figure about 87, give or take. A dozen or so kids were in the audience go get extra credit from a teacher who assigned attendance in a civics class, but otherwise an interested and supportive group.

Friends' president, Diane Hight spoke glowingly of the accomplishments of our Friends group achievements and it has been a stellar year. Again and again library staff has turned to our Friends for help and support and every time the Friends exceeded expectations. This is the fifth or sixth friends group I have worked with and it is the best by far.

Good job Friends!

Amelia Earhart Here January 24th

Always the trend setter, Amelia Earhart was photographed for the Modern Mechanix, January 1936 issue standing on a motorized scooter that looks much like the electric ones we see on the streets and sidewalks today. Don't miss the Ann Birney performance at our library this Thursday, Ann will perform as Amelia Earhart. She probably won't have the scooter. Thanks to girlbike.com for the reference.

Meanwhile in Scotland ...

Stuart MacBride writes a gritty police procedural set in Aberdeen, Scotland. Tagged as "Tartan Noir" by the Rocky Mountain News, this three book series is off to a dark start. Detective Sargeant Logan MacRae has his ups and downs as he bounces between the squads of two Detective Inspectors, one a fat, candy munching brute and the other a lesbian hard-case whose hair looks a fright and who rips into everyone around her with fervor and frequency.

The stories bring to light the seamy side of Scottish culture and crime with healthy doses of sex, violence, crime, and punishment thrown in for good measure. MacBride can keep a story moving and he covers the police action with attention to detail and never turns away from the hideous and ugly.

I started at the end with Bloodshot (2007) and am proceding backwards to Dying Light (2006) and will finish where he started with Cold Granite (2005.) The earliest one was not in our collection so I have ordered the paperback edition.

MacBride has an interesting website with some photographs of Aberdeen and he runs a blog on the site. His blog reflects his tough-guy take as he struggles with Internet access and problems with his wireless access. The bit of Scottish inflection in the dialog is easy to navigate and not a problem.

There is an interview of MacBride at The Mystery Reader.

Creating possibilities ...

Public library. Small town. Mission: Create Possibilities.

Julie Hildebrand takes on the mission to create possibilities over and over. In February she is introducing a new program series at the library about journaling in creative ways. The appeal of recording one's life is broad and ranges from daily weather notations to intimate ruminations. Many people start journals but fail to keep them going, getting bored with repetition or maybe simply running out of ideas. Adding a creative dimension to journaling may be just the element to add excitement and innovation to your efforts, stay tuned for more.

Look for notices at the library and on our website about the series which begins February 11.

Score One for Nick Wright

Local photojournalist, Nick Wright has the cover shot for this week's Time Magazine. Way to go Nick! I think that's me on the left.

Favorite Kansas Book Stores

My favorite bookstore in Kansas would have to be The Raven in Lawrence. At 6 East 7th Street, it is just off Mass and around the corner from a couple of good coffee shops. As you might surmise from the name it specializes in mystery offerings but carries a small eclectic mix of other interesting books as well. The staff is mystery-knowledgeable and helpful in suggesting authors and titles. The Raven started small and has stayed small. The new Borders in Lawrence is close enough to hit with a well-aimed Starbuck's brownie but I hope customer loyalty will keep the doors open at The Raven for many years. A steady stream of mystery writers come to The Raven for book signings. I saw Sue Grafton there a few years ago as did 75 or 80 others who gathered there that night. The Raven produces a free quarterly newsletter that features a couple of tight pages of forthcoming mystery titles.

Second, I will offer Watermark Books in Wichita as wonderful local bookstore worth a visit when you are visiting Wichita. Larger than The Raven, Watermark has more inventory and is more general in its offerings. A cozy cafe is tucked into a corner of the store and has a respectable menu. The store is located at 4701 East Douglas (corner of Douglas and Oliver Streets just a few blocks off of Kellogg.) Well worth our support.

Where else in Kansas are there book shops worth visiting? I'm not asking about the Borders or Barnes & Noble but locally rooted book shops hanging on by their fingernails since Amazon and the nationals have come on the scene. Drop in a Comment if you know of a shop or two.

Guest Blogger - Kim Alden Mallin, M.D.

My vacations are usually spent on small Caribbean islands, where the diving is great but the availability of good books isn’t. So I begin hoarding books several months before a trip, usually mailing ahead a box of books to avoid weighing down my luggage with 20 pounds of books.

On a recent dive trip, I finally broke down and read the latest Michael Palmer thriller, The Fifth Vial. I have been saving it for months, keeping it in case I ran out of anything good to read. The “fifth vial" was an extra tube of blood taken with every blood draw, surreptitiously sent for tissue-typing with the results stored in a massive database and used to illegally aid in international organ trading. And it was too bad if your liver matched the CEO of some big company...tell me that won’t make you think twice about getting your blood drawn next time you go to your doctor’s office!

Although perhaps not as well known as some other physician-authors, I find Michael Palmer every bit as good as Michael Crichton, Tess Gerritsen, or Robin Cook. Robin was two years ahead of Michael at Wesleyan and they both did their medical training at Mass General. It was after reading Robin Cook’s classic thriller, Coma, that he thought, “If Robin can write a book and has the same education as I do, why can’t I write a book?”

So he sat down with his typewriter and every night wrote one page. At the end of a year, he had 365 pages and a book titled The Corey Prescription. He sent it to a friend working at a New York publishing company who promptly told Michael that his writing was terrible…but that he had a great idea for a story. And that while writing could be taught, the creative part couldn’t and he believed Michael could be taught to write.

He has since written twelve books, including several New York Times bestsellers. My favorite is Natural Causes, the story of Dr. Sarah Baldwin, a holistic healing OB/GYN who discovers that her patients are mysteriously dying from an herbal vitamin she had prescribed. At the time this book was published, I had completed most of a surgery residency and greatly identified with being female in a mostly male world, where alternative views, attitudes, and beliefs were not readily accepted. I related so strongly to his protagonist that I wrote Michael a letter (yes, on paper…this was before the internet) expressing my appreciation for his portrait of women in medicine. Amazingly, he wrote me back and we have remained in contact. He credited his sister, also a physician, with helping him make Dr. Baldwin’s experience so authentic.

Another reason I admire Michael is because of his work with the Massachusetts Medical Society Physician Health Services. He serves as an associate director of this organization, which provides assistance to physicians battling problems such as chemical dependency and alcoholism. The Fifth Vial will be out in paperback later this month and his next hardcover, The First Patient, described by Entertainment Weekly as “a terrifying vision of the Hippocratic oath gone very wrong” comes out in February 2008-just in time for my next dive trip.

A Six-Pack of New Mysteries

The Chicago Way by Michael Harvey is the first one on the pile that hit my desk this morning. "A magnificent debut that should be read by all," says John Grisham on the dust jacket. (Well John, I'll just have to see about that.) Harvey is the co-writer and co-producer of the Cold Case Files television program, which may or may not be a good thing. Quoting the blurb, "... a fast-paced, stylish murder mystery featuring a tough-talking Irish cop turned private investigator who does for the city of Chicago what Elmore Leonard did for Detroit and Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles." That alone makes it a must read for me.


Next on the pile is Mike Doogan's Capitol Offense: A Nik Kane Alaska Mystery. Kirkus Review says, "This series kickoff provides a righteously appealing hero and terrific local color." I like the Alaska setting and Doogan received praise for his last mystery so I'm willing to give this a try.


Twist Phelan provided the next book, False Fortune: A Pinnalle Peak Mystery. Sue Grafton and Michael Connelly both provide dust jacket quotes. Grafton says the book, "sizzles," and Connelly writes, "Twist Phelan knows of what she writes." If those two veterans like this one I probably will too.






A Killer's Kiss by William Lashner follows the New York Times Bestseller Marked Man by Lashner. This is the sixth outing for Lasher who is called the East Coast version of Michael Connelly by Library Journal. Tall praise indeed.



Next is At the Old Hotel: A Bartender Brian McNulty Mystery by Con Lehane. Ken Bruen writes, "A fierce novel in the Irish sense ... it may well prove to be the definitive Irish-American saga. A dark emerald, lit by old glory ... a true masterpiece of slow burn." Using a bartender as the progagonist is a good hook and the first few pages of the book hold promise.


The last of the six is Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. From the cover, "Gritty, sensual and charged with dark secrets involving love, murder and a majestic, mute heroine." (I'm thinking that's the elephant.) An interesting hook and one that got me.

Endings, Some Are Better Than Others

Eye of the Beholder by Jim Ellis. It has been a good story, evil doers brought to their just end, fair maiden saved from a fate worse than death, redemption for the noble hero, but for God's sake END IT! This book has 45 pages too many. I am at the point of skimming to just reach the end and I pray for no more twists, Ellis has strangled me with one too many twists. Makes me wish he had attended Michael Connelly's workshop Ending the Novel at Just the Right Time instead of Dostoevsky's workshop Let's Drag This Sucker Out Another Two Hundred Pages.

Ok, I got it out of my system. Ellis writes a good mystery and I will keep him on my list of must reads and I will prepare myself for slow endings.

Tree Festival

All I Can Say is WOW!

Nearly 400 people streamed into our library last Saturday night for the lighting of our very tall Christmas Tree. We expected a large turnout but when the people just kept coming and coming and coming, it went beyond our expectations.

This is a view toward the tree while the Indy Singers performed Christmas favorites. Larry Anabell brought the Singers to the Library for their second performance and as always they were terrific.

Here Julie Hildebrand (Adult Services Manager and Event Coordinator) discusses our ornament fund raiser with artist/book illustrator/library board member Tim Raglin. Tim agreed to write the family names on purchased ornaments for the evening.

A daughter discusses her "Library Bucks" with her father. Kids earned a Library Buck for each book they read between Thanksgiving and the night of the party. The bucks were used to purchase gifts for their parents or caregivers in the Friends Gift Shop.

Above, Scott Petersen (Friends' Treasurer) helps a young lady select a gift for her mother. By our count over a thousand Library Bucks were used to purchase gifts on the night of the Festival.

Bradley Blake (Library Staffer) led Christmas carols all evening. Bradley played keyboard and guitar and led popular favorites like Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer probably a dozen times.

On the third floor of the library in the Children's Department, Santa and Mrs. Claus visited with over 100 children to hear the wishes and dreams for Christmas morning.

Miss Lily, the Crown and the Dance written and being read by Trudy Bryant. Illustrator Jacqueline Haltom is showing her Beautiful Artwork to the kids and parents gathered in our Story Area.

Julie Hildebrand and Diane Hight, Friends' President are due our thanks for pulling off this wonderful event. Lots of volunteers made the evening a success. Dozens of people made themselves available to bake cookies, pick-up last minute items at the store, wrap presents, serve treats, hand out programs, and a myriad of other things that have to happen for an event of this scale to be a success.

To all of you who went the extra mile to bring joy to our children - thanks.