Coming Through Slaughter – Michael Ondaatje

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “…and you like a weather bird arcing round in the middle of your life to exact opposites and burning your brains out so that from June 5 1907 till 1931 you were dropped into amber in the East Louisiana State Hospital. Some saying you went mad trying to play the devil’s…

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Down Solo – Earl Javorsky

(Reviewed by JD Jung)   “I’m jonesing pretty bad, so, bail out of the morgue, score some dope to tide me over, and then on to the next order of business: finding out who killed me.” Huh? Charlie Miner, our drug-addicted private investigator is having a bad day. Finding himself lying in a Los Angeles…

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Die For Me: A Bragg Thriller – Jack Lynch

(Reviewed by JD Jung) "Follow the grief and you'll find the killer." Peter Bragg, a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter turned private investigator is contacted by a woman, Maribeth, from his past. It’s not what you think. When he was a journalist, he talked her out of committing suicide, and she never forgot him. Now…

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Medusa – Michael Dibdin

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “Every woman is Medusa. When you look into her eyes, you see the entire history of the human race. That’s enough to turn anyone to stone.” Those were the words of a soldier, Leonardo Ferrero, whose body was discovered by Austrian cavers while hiking the Dolomites. The problem was that Ferrero…

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Poison Pen – Sheila Lowe

(Reviewed by Cathy Carey) What does your handwriting tell about you?  What does the slant of your writing, the pressure of the writing, opened loop versus closed loop ( like with the letter “g” or “y”), cursive versus print all mean?  What if you write half cursive/ half print? A lot of this says whether you have…

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Women with Big Eyes – Angeles Mastretta, (Translated from the Spanish by Amy Schildhouse Greenberg)

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “A shiver ran down Paulina Trasloheros’s back. This man was horrible, excessive, outrageous. To exorcise him, she would have to commit a string of sins for which she could never repent. Not even when he decided to return to New York, where they lay success, a success that could not diminish…

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Fatale – Jean-Patrick Manchette, Afterword by Jean Echenoz, (Translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith)

(Reviewed by JD Jung) " I don’t tell them I’m a killer. I’m a woman, and they wouldn’t take me seriously. I tell them that I know a killer. Sometimes I let them assume that he is my lover. That makes them jealous. It’s fun." This thirty to thirty-five year old woman-we'll refer to by…

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Madame Alexandra’s Rules of Business: The Enduring Principles of Business Success – Claude Roessiger

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “…money brings the only worthwhile thing it can bring: freedom…it being only the medium of exchange between a man’s labor and his freedom. Labor is not dishonorable, nor is the money which is only the comestible fruit of that labor; the two are one. Those however who mistake money for a…

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The Dangerous Edge of Things – Tina Whittle

(Reviewed by Lee Nelson) I am a Trey Woman and I cannot lie! I just finished Tina Whittle’s debut novel, The Dangerous Edge of Things and fell madly in love with her style, her characters, and her ability to truly weave a solvable mystery. The story centers on Tia Randolph, a southern girl who, along…

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Rupert: A Confession – Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, (Translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison )

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “She was my martyrdom, my masochism, and my sugar-sweet, shimmering Mira. She appeared like a reflection before my eyes the first time I saw her, she killed me when she was mine, and she finally brought me back to life when she’d murdered me for good." Rupert: A Confession is sordid…

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