Winter reading to quell the doldrums
Published 2:26 pm Sunday, January 26, 2025
The Close Up (Gallery Books) by Pip Drysdale.
Leviathan (Lividian Trade HC) by Robert McCammon.
Assume Nothing (Thomas & Mercer) by Joshua Corin.
The Silent Watcher (Thomas & Mercer) by Victor Methos.
Trial By Ambush (Thomas & Mercer) by Marcia Clark.
Leviathan (Lividian Trade HC) by Robert McCammon.
Novels written in driving, present-tense, first-person perspective prose are part and parcel of thriller fare, but Australian author Pip Drysdale elevates the genre in a culminating clash of life imitating art in her fifth novel, The Close Up (Gallery Books).
That that cacophony resolves so complete and bittersweetly at the end is a masterstroke from a veteran pen, but getting there is really what the journey is about.
Zoe Ann Weiss has dreams and ambitions, both of which drive her to the West Coast and Los Angeles. Things go off the road rapidly.
As an aspiring writer in the City of Angels, Zoe finds a publisher only to have her first novel fail spectacularly. Zach, the aspiring-actor bartender she’s been projecting a future with, ghosts her — and then goes on to mega-stardom as an action film hero. Now, Zoe’s rooted to dead-end job, delivering flowers to those who dreams actually come true.
Until … serendipity, or what seems serendipitous, makes a cold call as well as a flower delivery to the once-aspiring, now accomplished and famous-as-Arnold actor. Unpredictably, Zoe and Zach pick up where they left off and things seem to be taking a better turn.
Famous rubs off on Zoe, and even the paparazzi are a sort-of welcome intrusion. Now that the whole world knows Zoe by association with her leading-star boyfriend, her near-past is resurrected, and that includes the failed novel that is now performing like a best-seller.
Until … zemblanity, the polar opposite of serendipity, takes a page from Zoe’s thriller — yes, the authorial parallels between Zoe and Drysdale are intended — in the form of a person stalking Zach who is bent on recreating every violent scene from the plot of Zoe’s debut. That those scenes include such intricacies as a human heart ending up on a windshield, and that the main character ends up dead, make for criss-crossing real-life, fictional-life (well, really, fictional-life, fictional-life) plotting that Drysdale does well to maintain and parse out at the appropriate times.
Add to this wonderful mess the author’s (Drysdale, that is) subtle and meaningful musings as she ably and repeatedly breaks the fourth wall, and “The Close Up” is a ready, steamy surprise that would make Cecil B. DeMille proud.
Also out now
Trial By Ambush (Thomas & Mercer) by Marcia Clark: Author and criminal lawyer Clark paints a dark portrait of a neglected and unwanted child who grows into a beautiful woman plagued by her past. Caught in a web of robbery turned murder, Barbara Graham is villainized and found guilty by a press enraptured by her beauty despite mounting evidence of her innocence in a media circus the prosecutor is quick to embrace.
The Silent Watcher (Thomas & Mercer) by Victor Methos: Paying it forward is all attorney Piper Danes has in mind when she leaves a rising career to work as a guardian ad litem for 15-year-old Sophie Grace, the sole survivor of a horrific family murder. When Sophie’s life becomes entangled with that of a serial killer, Piper teams with a tough judge and mysterious detective to find the murderer before Sophie, and herself, are caught in the web.
Leviathan (Lividian Trade HC) by Robert McCammon: Book 10 of 10 in McCammon’s Matthew Corbett novels has been much-awaited and it doesn’t disappoint. The decology involving a 17th century magistrate’s clerk with a penchant for unraveling mysteries in Colonia America concludes satisfactorily here, and McCammon is skilled enough with backstory that you could read “Leviathan as a standalone. Yet, a suggestion: Buy this book but start with the first, “Speaks the Nightbird.” Having both as bookends will likely make you want to fill in the middle.
Assume Nothing (Thomas & Mercer) by Joshua Corin: Georgia author Corin crafts a thriller involving a 6-year-old whose mother’s murder is solved by a brilliant detective. Kat McCann becomes enthralled with the criminologist — and the bestselling novels those cases inform — even after her father is found guilty of the crime. A decade later, Kat’s life devolves into deception as she strikes up a growing friendship with the detective who becomes more and more engaging, calling into question nearly every part of her life to date.
Water Folk (Defiance) by John Hood: Book 3 of Hood’s The Folklore Cycle continues the North Carolina author’s retelling of American history through fable, fantasy and heavy dose of magical creatures. The charm of this continuing series is rooted in the storytelling and the real-life characters that story embraces. In this volume, water maiden Dela is entrapped by enemies, and it’s up to friends Har the dwarf and Goran the sylph to come to her rescue. Along the way, they’ll meet up with Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, Herman Melville, Edgar Allen Poe, Kit Carson and others as history meets fantasy for an exhilarating lesson. Start here, or better, with Book 1, “Mountain Folk,” to unearth the story of our nation from the beginning.
Tom Mayer is the editor of The Cullman Times. Reach him at tmayer@cullmantimes.com.
