Category: Book Reviews
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Review–You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive)
Muller can’t get a stiffy. That shouldn’t be a problem for protagonist Sam Bennett, but it is, because Sam’s wife wants a grandchild. And Sam’s daughter is married to Muller, a talented hypochondriac and flabby Renaissance man, Sam’s foil with a killer recipe for pot brownies who can’t, for the life of him, get a…
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Novel Review–Black River
Beneath the surface of Black River, the taut debut by S.M. Hulse, flows the grey enigma of ultimate justice. The narrative forces the reader to ask: Does a recidivist criminal capable of torture, yet claiming to have found Jesus, deserve parole? Or would such redemption be an injustice to the man he brutalized decades earlier? By…
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Review – The Family Hightower
Blood Sport and the American Dream The Family Hightower takes a savage and intelligent look at the American Dream, asserting an inextricable link between capitalism and crime in a voice that borders on the eternal. Appropriate, considering the timeless and unattainable aspiration of Brian Francis Slattery’s characters: to “get out”, to escape the prison of wealth and violence…
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Crime Novel Review – Under A Russian Heaven
Laurence Walker’s debut novel opens on a high wire between the noir and the literary. Here’s an obviously talented writer with an instinct for giving and withholding detail, at once building and satisfying tension. His technique hints at a pulse just below the surface, something buried alive beneath layers of detail, which the author promises…
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Crime Novel Review – The Carrier
Preston Lang’s discreetly funny debut crime novel The Carrier is an amoral story about semi-decent, semi-depraved, mostly-human people who eat and argue and screw genuinely enough as they pursue their proverbial pot of gold in parts unknown of the U.S.A. Some get what they got coming, some get less, others more, but always around the corner is another day…
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Review (Honduras) – Paradise in Front of Me
Paradise in Front of Me – Realizing Life’s Beauty in an Unexpected Place – by Kevin G. Finch (Honduras 2004–06) The recurring image in Kevin G. Finch’s Paradise in Front of Me is that of an impoverished Honduran child looking up at a locked schoolhouse door. Shut out again. The author and the residents of El Paraíso repeatedly find…
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Review (Niger) – A Dry and Thirsty Land
A Dry and Thirsty Land: The Misadventures of a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa – by Bryant Wieneke (Niger 1974–76) Mr. Wieneke’s engaging 60,000-word memoir contains all the stuff of Peace Corps legend, from encounters with exotic insects and large snakes to bouts of diarrhea and Malarial fever. It also contains a large dose of the question:…
Ben East Books 