With "For Whom the Beep Tolls, " she sets off in yet another direction. The creator of the humorous Regan Reilly mysteries has produced her first short story ever, a few elements of which are based-believe it or not-on real-life incidents.
– O. P.
mary higgins clark
Happily married with five young children, Mary Higgins Clark's husband came home from work one day and, having just announced his arrival, had a heart attack and died. His mother, who lived with the family, heard the commotion and ran out of her upstairs bedroom, asking what had happened. Mary said, "It's Warren; he's dead. " Shocked by the news, his mother immediately had a heart attack and died too. It is the sort of incredibly melodramatic tragedy that could never appear in fiction.
The young widow then had to get on with life. Each morning, she rose at 5: 00 a. m., carried her portable typewriter to the kitchen table, and wrote for two hours before getting her children up, dressed, fed, and off to school, after which she went to her full-time job. After work, she made sure the kids were fed, bathed, got their homework done, and off to bed before she collapsed herself. The next morning, more of the same. I confess to being unimpressed when aspiring writers speak of their passion for writing being unfulfilled because they are simply too busy to get words on paper.
As perhaps the bestselling mystery writer in the world, Mary Higgins Clark is most closely associated with suspense fiction in which a woman or child is in peril. In "Definitely, a Crime of Passion, "she has written a somewhat different story, a breezy throwback to the married couple as sleuths. Here, a handsome and much-loved former president who flies his own plane, and his gorgeous and energetic young wife (think James Bond meets Mr. and Mrs. North) appear in the first of what will surely be a series of adventures.
– O. P.
james crumley
A significant portion of our cultural life is filled with lists: the year's best movies, top-ranked TV shows, bestsellers, and so on. It's all subjective and often useless, but it's also fun. We all know we should read every book so we can make our own decision about the best books of the year, and we should see every movie so we can decide for ourselves who are the best actors and actresses, and on and on. But in a busy life, this simply isn't possible, and the lists help to give us some direction.
In my own list of the best hard-boiled fiction, I have maintained for the past decade that the single greatest private-eye novel ever written is James Crumley's The Last Good Kiss. The title alone gives it a running start, and its first sentence is quoted by mystery aficionados more than any line except "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. "
When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.
This is James Crumley's first short story in twenty-three years and it is without question one of the finest crime stories ever written, filled with characters and texture enough for any serious novel.
– O. P.
john gardner
Sometimes the price of fame and fortune is high. John Gardner, one of the handful of espionage writers whose best work will endure (I still think his Garden of Weapons is the greatest spy novel I've read), never quite attained the popular and critical recognition of such contemporaries as John le Carre, Len Deighton, Ken Follett, and Frederick Forsyth. Then, several years after the death of Ian Fleming, he agreed to continue the James Bond series.
Naturally, those books immediately shot to the bestseller lists, giving him the rewards of vast popularity. Equally predictably, critics blasted him for turning his back on his more serious work, saying the Bond books didn't have the depth and power of his other novels-the same ones they'd ignored in the past. Recently, he has produced novels that rank with his best work, notably Maestro, which brought Herbie Kruger back to work, and Confessor.
Gardnerwrote (not in this story) that "sex is the glue that holds love together. " That may well be the unifying theme of all his best work, which has as much to do with human relations as it does with international skulduggery.
– O. P.
faye kellerman
Hearts and flowers. Moonlight and roses. Passion and obsession. Sometimes love's magical elixir turns suddenly to venom. In Faye Kellerman's haunting tale of romance-cum-loathing, a young woman is first swept off her feet, then forced to struggle to regain her balance- all in the name of love.
Although every lover wears masks, some are more deceptive than others. And sometimes the deception can take an ominous twist that causes the war between the sexes to move past trivial skirmishes onto a bloody battlefield where only a single winner can prevail.
Faye Kellerman, a lovely, charming, apparently gentle woman, has written convincingly of the darkest side of love gone wrong. Sales of her novels have not quite reached the heady levels of her husband Jonathan's (also represented in this volume), but the gap closes a bit with each new publication. They seem to revel in each other's successes and are as proud of each other's as of their own accomplishments. By all accounts, there is no dark side to their marriage!
– O. P.
jonathan kellerman
Love isn't always about hearts and flowers: sometimes it's also about smushed carrots and dirty diapers. An infant, in fact, often tugs at the tenderer emotions even more deeply than the most adoring paramour, because the passion felt for a child is about innocence and vulnerability as well as the ineluctable ties of blood.
In suspense maestro Jonathan Kellerman's confounding tale, mother love certainly seems to be the focus as young mom Karen indulges cute little Zoe in a nearly empty restaurant at lunchtime. Gurgling in her high chair while cleverly pitching peas to the floor, Zoe is oblivious of the table of sinister-looking gents in the corner. Karen, however, is not and, somehow, within the space of a few confused moments, a quick exit is the move she's forced to make.
Jonathan Kellerman is that great rarity-an author who enjoyed enormous success with his first book (When the Bough Breaks, which won an Edgar Allan Poe award from the Mystery Writers of America), and who manages to increase both the high quality of the work and its success, as each subsequent novel has immediately leapt onto the bestseller list.