October 15, 2006

Books of the Week: FIRESTORM and GLASS HOUSES by Rachel Caine, FIELD OF BLOOD by Denise Mina

I’ve read several books this week, and two of them should get special notice. I am a huge fan of Rachel Caine’s, and I enjoyed FIRESTORM as much as I expected I would. The Weather Warden books are outstanding in structure and mythology, and a huge amount of research has gone into them, though to Cain’s credit, it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb. (I really hate books where you can tell the writer decided she/he just HAD to use everything that she’d learned for the book.) I don’t know how much more punishment Caine’s protagonist, Joanne Baldwin, can take, and I fear there’s no totally happy ending for her, but I wouldn’t miss a minute of the ride. I’d also just finished GLASS HOUSES, Caine’s first Morganville vamp book, classified as young adult, and I was very impressed.

Denise Mina’s FIELD OF BLOOD is simply brilliant. Mina writes “tartan noir,” dark and gritty crime novels set in Glasgow. FIELD OF BLOOD is touching, layered, subtle, gripping, and all the other good adjectives I can think of. Mina’s chief protagonist is eighteen-year-old Paddy Meehan, and in the 1980s Paddy is an office errand girl at the Glasgow newspaper. But Paddy is ambitious and driven, though she also loves her blue-collar family and cares for her fiancé, a young man quite content with his narrow lot in life. Paddy has a lot of growing up to do, and choices to make, and her life will be changed forever -- in fact, blown to bits – by two crimes that are decades apart. If you’re an aspiring writer, reading Mina could be dangerous, because she’s so good she’ll either inspire you or make you despair.

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In the middle of the week, I fly over to Dallas for a one-night event with the Waldenbooks store managers. I believe it will be a dinner format, and I believe I’ll be seated at a table with maybe ten managers from different locations, and I’ll chat with them while we eat. Then I’ll sign books . . . and I’ll probably have a good signing line because they’re free. It’ll be pleasant, and I’ll meet some nice people, and maybe get to hang with Christine Feehan a little, since she’s going too.

My fear is repetition. I’ve been around a long time (in the writing world, that is – oh, heck, just in general). Like all people who entertain others, I have a fund of favorite stories that I’ve tested out over the years, stories that generally get a good response, whether serious or amused. Here is my secret fear: I’m sitting at a table full of people, and when I see the natural opportunity to tell, say, my favorite Stupid Criminal Story, the man to my right says, “Heard that one two years ago in Phoenix.” Then, when I get to my Deer in the Ditch Story, the woman across the table says, “Heard that one last month in Madison.” And so on and so forth.

After a few of these events, I feel that eventually every funny story I’ve accumulated, and several of the serious ones, will be known across America, and I won’t be able to say anything someone hasn’t already heard.

So be warned, I’m on the prowl for new material. Nothing is safe. If you want to tell something and you particularly want to safeguard it, you’d better swear me to secrecy, or it’ll end up in my story mill.

And if I tell it back to you, just don’t tell me you’ve heard it before.

--Charlaine Harris