Dead On

Dead On by Ann Kelly

(iUniverse / 0-595-32664-1 / August 2004 / 204 pages / $14.95)

Brian DePalma is one of my favorite directors, and the movies of his that I like best are in the same genre as Dead On. We don't know who the killer is until the end, but he seems to be a fascinating, psychopathic character. Ann Kelly has crafted a fine first novel with a plotline that is easily visualized as a movie thriller. Homage is also paid to William Petersen as both Gil Grissom and the Manhunter, a movie that I have always felt should have been a monster hit for both Petersen and Michael Mann. The former had to zip up his Quincy suit to become famous, and the latter was already famous for the coke and Scarab patrol on Miami Vice, but those are other stories. The plot of Dead On would seem like just another pyscho killer chase if Scully and Mulder had not let one of their spooky plots escape from the set of The X-Files.

Ann Yang is a new ME of Chinese descent who has just begun her new job in Doylestown, PA. She would really like to forget that butthead she had married in an immature moment of stupidity, and a mystery based in the history of her own century-old house was sufficient to drive out the rotten marriage demons. Although she is never really certain if the butthead has not returned to terrorize her, someone has insinuated his way into her life in a most disturbing manner. A serial killer is leaving buttons from a Civil War uniform at the scenes of his crimes. Ann has discovered an intriguing diary hidden in her new/old house, and the issues may or may not be related. She has a trusted friend to help her with the case, a retired FBI agent with loads of street sense and a devotion to both Ann and his own family. The two sleuths track the killer through both time and space. Don't ask me to explain it. The plot is a mystery, and the secrets are not revealed until the end. Is Dead On a supernatural story? To some degree, yes. Is it a mystery with convolutions that would make even Mr. DePalma dizzy? Yes.

Much of the plot surrounds a diary composed in 1903. Whenever the heroine reads this diary, the text is in italics. Multiple, whole pages of italics are annoying to read. This and the incredibly short chapters are easily the leading negatives of Dead On. A lot more description of the characters and the motives behind their actions would expand the length of these half-page chapters considerably. The text is so brief that the reader is sometimes left a bit confused. It is unclear if the author meant to impart an especially quick pacing to the story, intentionally lead the reader down blind alleys, or introduce characters and subplots that she is saving for a sequel. Whatever the case, this completes the actions of my Complaint Department.

Ann Kelly has crafted a highly rated first effort about a time-traveling psycho-killer and his CSI-type pursuer. She throws in the Civil War, schizophrenia, lesbian love, past-life regression, pre-Katrina New Orleans, and the kitchen sink. You wouldn't think all this would fit into 204 pages, but it does. You will like this little dose of escapist fiction if the genres of murder mystery and serial killers are two of your favorites. If you are an X-Files fan, too, you will probably love it to death.

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Securing a Book Review

The next review will be of Ann Kelly's Dead On. Look for it soon.

The way to secure a review of your book on this site is to reply with a website or direct email address where I can reach you. Due to the limitations of internet availability in my area, I cannot easily contact you through a third-party source on a large server. For instance, if you give me an email address such as joeblow@yahoo.com, I can quickly respond to your message. I can respond through Authors Den quite easily also, but I cannot go through Yahoo or Yahoo Groups or MySpace or another blog server very easily. I cannot put my direct email on the blog site or I would be spammed to death. If you do not want your email exposed, even within a comment, on the blog site, you can send me a message through Authors Den. This convoluted path is the only way I have been able to dodge the spammers. Please feel free to contact me about a review any time. Thank you.

The Traitor's Wife

The Traitor's Wife: A Novel of the Reign of Edward II by Susan Higginbotham
(iUniverse / 0-595-35959-0 / July 2005 / 492 pages / $25.95)

Susan Higginbotham's epic medieval soap opera is an engrossing tale of historical fiction surrounding the reign of King Edward II during the 1300's. This book has already been acquiring glowing reviews from many sources, and my two cents worth of opinion will hopefully add to the book's reputation. The Traitor's Wife is further proof that there are some marvelous iU authors out there, and I have proclaimed it my job to find them. This is a TV miniseries waiting to happen. Who's ready to write the screenplay?

One of my favorite fiction books of all time is Anne Rice's The Witching Hour, and strangely enough, I see many parallels between the two books, with two significant exceptions. The Witching Hour is a 1000+ page account of the fictional Mayfair Family of witches residing in New Orleans long before the devastation of Katrina. The Traitor's Wife is a lightly fictionalized account of the broadly extended royal family of England during the 1300's, centuries before the tragic ending of the reign of Princess Diana. The first difference between the two tales is that the witches flew out of Anne's imagination, but King Edward's court really did go through all those trials and tribulations. The second difference is that The Traitor's Wife is less than half as long as The Witching Hour. Most of the page count difference is the direct result of the many slowly simmering descriptions of places and events present in The Witching Hour; whereas, in contrast, The Traitor's Wife skips most of the narrative description and goes right to the conversation. Hence, The Traitor's Wife can easily be visualized as a screenplay in which the focus is totally upon the words and actions of the characters. Even a miniseries of The Witching Hour could never capture the intense depth of the Mayfairs and their control over the city of New Orleans that lasted for centuries. Most of the characters in The Traitor's Wife were married in their teens and lived relatively short lives. The Mayfair witches had spirits and vampires for companions, reflecting lifespans of an entirely different nature.

Americans have always been fascinated by both supernatural spirits that live forever and English royalty that live and die tragically. The New Orleans Garden District has always been one of my favorite places. On numerous occasions, I have visited the same streets haunted by The Mayfairs. I know there are many Americans, and I dare say that most of them are women, who have been equally as drawn to the lives of the many variations of the British royal family, culminating in the death of Diana. The story of Edward II is as appallingly shocking as anyone might want to discover, and the truth of its history adds to the reading pleasure of The Traitor's Wife. Although The Mayfairs were a matriarchal society and men ruled the kingdom in medieval England, the tale of The Traitor's Wife is told from the feminine perspective. The men do the dirty work and the women have to clean it up. The male spirit Lasher sets off an endless chain of tragic events by having sex with the female Mayfair witches, and King Edward sets the standard by having sex with another man, or two. Let the games begin....

Neither The Witching Hour nor The Traitor's Wife would ordinarily be a book I would select to read. They both look too much to me like books women would enjoy much more than men, and to some extent, this is certainly true. What makes me recommend The Traitor's Wife so strongly is how much I did like it, in spite of the fact that I am a lot more fascinated by Dracula than Diana. Of course I have read nearly all of Anne Rice's books (The Witching Hour twice). Susan Higginbotham has written only one book, and now Eleanor le Despenser resides on my bookshelf only inches away from the Mayfair witches. What higher recommendation can I offer?

See Also: Interview with Susan Higginbotham

Book Review Update

I want to update a few statements made in the first post on July 12, 2006. As the plot has thickened, a few concepts have solidified.All of these updates fall under the heading, Examine the Following Details Thoroughly.

Concerning the statement referring to the sites on which a review will be posted: I shall post a review on this site, Amazon, B&N, and Authors Den. Anyone who sends a book for review, should get an Authors Den page, if you do not already have one, otherwise the review will be on only three sites.

Concerning the complexity of the review: The longest review will probably be placed on this site, with shorter versions on the other sites. If I have the time and inclination, all four reviews will be individually written. If not, there will be some copying and pasting utilized. A lot of this will be determined by the number of requests for reviews that I get, so the authors that make their requests early in the process will probably get the most attention.

The authors I would most like to help are those who have created carefully researched and crafted works, and then spent significant time promoting them, only to see horrible (or worse, no) sales rankings at Amazon and B&N. I am looking for great writers, not books by opportunistic hacks that just happen to publish the hot subject of the moment. Since I read every book cover to cover that I am going to review, this project is a slow process. The earlier submissions will invariably receive more of my time in the creation of reviews.

Concerning the types of books I like: I do not favor either fiction or nonfiction. I read about equal numbers of both. My favorite author is Anne Rice, but I find Stephen King a bit too repetitive and predictable. I have read most of Robert Rimmer's work, and I certainly like his subject matter. In case you did not know, some of his books have been re-released by iU. I just finished a 750-page biography of Bob Dylan. I read Scaduto's version decades ago and wanted to read another perspective. Al Franken entertains me, and I think Thomas Frank offers scholarly research on his topics. Carlos Castaneda told a spellbinding tale in his Don Juan series, however unbelievable it might have been. Harold Robbins has always been my favorite of the trash novelists. I try to inject a spaciness into my own books that I hope approaches that of Kurt Vonnegut. Jean Shepherd is the king of nostalgia and Peter Egan is the best writer of stories about cars and motorcycles. The bottom line is that I am not seeking a particular genre to review on this blog.

I am looking for proof that iUniverse authors are capable of writing great books that deserve to be discovered and read. Bring on the submissions!

Convergence of Valor

Convergence of Valor:  

The Men of the H. L. Hunley 

by Guntis G. Goncarovs
(iUniverse / 0-595-37055-1 / December 2005 / 250 pages / $16.95)

 

Dive! Dive! Put some muscle into it, men! Historical Fiction author Guntis Goncarovs takes us to the bottom of Mobile Bay in the first submarine developed during the U.S. Civil War. The H. L. Hunley was manned and powered by a crew of eight non-Union men who were not exactly soldiers, either. Most of them had to be very strong men because the screw was turned manually by the crew using an elaborate system of cranks and gears. The torpedo was dragged behind the sub with a rope, and the only light inside the sub emitted from a candle at each end. The Hunley was designed, built, and tested in Mobile, AL, for a mission crucial to the Southern cause, the breaking of the Federal blockade of Charleston, SC. Union ships had cut off the shipment of supplies to Charleston and held their position for months. The Confederate Navy was willing to take desperate measures at the risk of many lives. Convergence of Valor is a fictionalized account of whatever actually happened to several crews of the Hunley during its development and deployment. The exact details of the story are unknown.Convergence of Valor takes us to a special place in American history. If you are a fan of this type of reading, this book belongs on your bookshelf between Bruce Catton's This Hallowed Ground and Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October. The author has done his research on the history of the Hunley. Don't let his Russian-sounding name throw you: he lives not far from the location of the actual events. You can put the words H. L. Hunley in any search engine and discover plenty of details about the true heroic events surrounding this primitive submarine. As in the two classics noted, the technical details surround the unknown variables in a manner that brings the historical events to life. Yes, it's a shorter book concerning a very specific event, but the quality and mood are very similar. Mr. Goncarovs puts the reader on that manually powered sub. He lets the reader experience how scary such a place would be. Dead men tell no tales... but this one does.

Gustis G. Goncarovs' website

Welcome to iUniverse Book Reviews

Introduction for iUniverse Authors

Would you like an online review of your iUniverse book? The evidence suggests that tens of thousands of you would. After careful study of the POD market for about seven years, I am considering entering a new hobby, just to see where it leads me.

I am an author who has contributed to traditionally published books and released four books with iUniverse. My viewpoint toward iU and publishing is somewhat unusual. Three of my iUniverse books were never submitted to traditional publishers for many reasons, the most interesting one being that I want to create my own style in which none of my books fall within the same genre, at least from a conventional sense. My books are of a particular type of nonfiction that I want to release at a particular time. I want all the covers to reflect a particular style, and I prefer to slowly build an educated readership rather than go for the quick buck. I don't make money on my books, and I do not expect to do so. I write because I feel compelled to communicate with an audience, no matter how miniscule that audience may be. I write for quality instead of quantity.

My attitude toward iUniverse is unlike the horde of what I call the slap-fighters on the POD blogs and message boards. I am tiring of the snotty attitudes of those people, both the ones who have their own blogs and those who just pop up and dominate message boards created by others. I have only three negative things to say about iU: price, price, and price. They charge too much in set-up fees, book retail prices, and wholesale prices to the authors. Absolutely everything else I can say about the company is professional and positive. I have no interest in supporting competing companies, so this offer is for iU authors only.

Examine the Following Details Thoroughly

Send me a free copy of your iUniverse book and I shall review it. I'll consider a review on this blog site, Authors Den, Amazon, and/or B&N. Note: All self-published POD imprints (except Lulu) are considered for review as of 4/1/08.

Will I place the review on more than one site? I don't know yet.

Will I write an extensive, detailed review? I don't know that, either.

Will I write a review without actually reading the book? No.

Will I write a scathing review of a bad book? Not unless you happen to act like a butthead to me in some way, such as sending me flaming emails.

Will I read and review every book I receive? Probably not, particularly if the grammar and editing look like the book was written by Ernest T. Bass.

Will I let each author know if his or her book is being reviewed? Yes.

Will I let an author know if I am not reviewing the book because I could not in good faith give it a positive review? Yes.

Will I let an author know by email not to send me a book I have no interest in reading? Yes.

How can the author get my mailing address to send a book for review? (1) Respond on this blog site with your interest and categorize your book. (2) Either include your email or suggest an alternate contact point in your blog response. (3) We can connect outside the blog so I can give you my address.

Will I put your book up for sale at Amazon either after reading it or instead of reading it? No, I find that practice despicable. If I wish to dispose of a book, I'll give it to a prospective reader. I have no intention of spending or making any cash in this endeavor.

What types of books am I most interested in reading? I have a soft spot for werewolves, vampires, and other gothic horror, but I care very little for science fiction. I like political and economic nonfiction, but I want nothing to do with corporate propoganda about how to get more work out of your employees or how to get a million-dollar job in five minutes. I refuse to review any iU books that have sold well by what I call cheating; i.e., having a celebrity's name in the title or being about a celebrity. I do not want to read any iUniverse book that is selling well purely because of the title or subject matter. Get-rich-quick schemes and their associates will not be considered for review.

That about sums it up. If no one joins this blog, I shall assume that no one is interested in whatever I have to say in or about book reviews. If I get inundated with requests, I'll deal with that situation as fairly as I can if and when it happens. I am making this offer purely for my own entertainment and to satisfy my curiosity. Let's see if it goes anywhere.