FALL by Colin McAdam (2009)

A friend recommended McAdam's first novel SOME GREAT THING--about a plasterer in Ottawa and his son (sounds boring but it was a fantastic read)--so when I saw his name on the list at Harbourfront, I decided to go and hear him read from his second book which launches the Hamish Hamilton imprint at Penguin Canada.

FALL is not only the name of the beautiful and smart girlfriend to Julius, the protagonist, but also the leitmotif of the novel. Several of the players fall from grace in this privileged boarding school based on the tony Ashbury College in Ottawa, where McAdam was once a student as the son of a diplomat.

Although the meanness and hijinks of the boarders is typical for that milieu, Julius's roommate Noel takes cruelty to a new level and it is from his point of view that we get the insider's perspective as he looks back at his final year from the remove of his adult life.

What impressed me most about McAdam's book is his dialogue which is quintessentially teenish in its rhythm and content.

A STAIN ON THE SILENCE by Andrew Taylor

Continuing my current obsession with crime fiction, I picked up one of Andrew Taylor's books, which does not feature a detective.

James is well established in his career and firmly grounded in his relationship to his wife Nicky until his past rears its ugly head and bites him in the ass in the form of a telephone call from Lily Murthington who is dying of cancer in a local hospice.

The novel shifts from present to past and we fill in the sordid details about Jamie's adolescence at boarding school and in the company of his classmate Charles/Carlo Murthington and his family--father Hugo, sister Felicity and stepmother Lily. There is a dark secret that Taylor manages to withhold until the final 100 pages and it is this secret that is Jamie's undoing in addition to the idea that he may have fathered a daughter with Lily, a young woman named Kate who was raised as Carlo's half-sister and who is in a spot of trouble herself thinking she will be blamed for an accidental death.

It seems a little soap opera-ish from the outset, but Taylor manages to make you care for Jamie and his unfortunate circumstances and wish for him to be able to set things right.

A NOBLE RADIANCE by Donna Leon

In a field outside of Venice, the partially decayed corpse of a young man is discovered in a makeshift shallow grave. What identifies him is his family ring--he is of noble lineage and has been "missing" for over a year. Detective Brunetti finds himself telling the deceased parents about their son's unfortunate end and then is stuck in a web of lies as he tries to discover what circumstances led to the boy's death.

There was a very public story of kidnapping, but Brunetti doesn't believe it. There is more to the Lorenzoni family and its business dealings than meets the eye. With the help of his connected father-in-law, the Count, Brunetti manages to uncover unsettling truths about the ties that bind.

GRIEF ENCOUNTERS by Stuart Pawson

I found the title misleading of this DI Charlie Priest crime novel. Though, I liked the way the narratives wove together--the disgraced police officer who has obviously been framed; the headmistress who had hoped for a romantic tryst who ends up being driven off the road; the married MP caught in an extra-curricular passionate clinch who decides to end it once and for all; the fabulous four who plot different ways to play the game that they have devised and to which they are so deviously and deviantly committed.

Pawson certainly knows how to spin a good yarn peopled with characters you love to loathe and a detective you will continually root for.

THE ALMOST ARCHER SISTERS by LIsa Gabriele

Gabriele's reading at Harbourfront convinced me to pick up a copy of her new novel, the story of two sisters who couldn't possibly lead more disparate lives: Beth Ann and Georgia "Peachy" Archer. Beth is a fashionable, skinny bitch New Yorker who has abandoned her farm girl upbringing and embraced the shallowness of a frenetic professional life while Peachy abandoned her dream of becoming a social worker, when she got knocked up at nineteen and married Beth's high school sweetheart.

On one of Beth's occasional fly by night visits to her family in rural southern Ontario, she makes an unforgivable decision and that decision pushes the plot forward and has the sisters exchanging lives, if only for a few days.

What kept me reading THE ALMOST ARCHER SISTERS was a need to witness Peachy exact her fumbling revenge in one of my favourite cities, where even the pavement hums with expectation.

REMEMBER ME? by Sophie Kinsella (2008)

As a leader of the pack of chicklit, British-born, New York Times bestseller Sophie Kinsella knows how to wend a tale of a not-so-enviable life of privilege. Her protagonist, 28 yr. old Lexi Smart wakes up in a London hospital after a car crash, believing that it is the day of her father's funeral 3 years previous. Trouble is she doesn't remember the three years in between where she managed to lose a load of weight, have her teeth done, scrabble up the business ladder, alienate her friends and marry the rich man of her dreams.

Kinsella manages to let the reader in on the loathsome truth about Lexi's less-than-ideal husband and her coterie of spoiled "friends" while Lexi herself gives it the old college try to rebuild the marriage that she can't remember ever existed. Her supporting cast including her grifting little sister Amy, her Whippet-obsessed mother and her husband's right hand man Jon help, intentionally or not, to put Lexi on her proper path of redemption and self-discovery, but not before she faces the enigmatic Mont Blanc"--not the pen--and resolves for herself to set herself straight.

BORN STANDING UP by Steve Martin (2008)

Poet, philosopher, novelist, screenwriter, playwright, art aficianado, actor and comic: Steve Martin is all of those and more. I, for one, am grateful that he did not have the funding to purse a Ph. D. in philosophy in the early 60s, because he may have ended up an abstract-scripting fuddy duddy, holed up in a state university, hoping to discover the meaning of life.

His work ethic and determination to succeed are enviable and ought to be modelled by young men and women in 2009.

ONE FIFTH by Candace Bushnell (2008)

Bushnell catapulted to fame with her novel SEX AND THE CITY in the nineties, and followed that with another LIPSTICK JUNGLE, also purchased and developed for a t.v. series. ONE FIFTH, her latest entre into spoiled life in Manhattan, seems destined for the same trajectory. Definitely the doyenne of Chick lit, Bushnell returns to expected topics such as class, wealth and sex in an elite building with its prestigious address on Fifth Avenue.

It is difficult to find sympathy for characters who spend their days blogging and whinging about earning only 350K/year while neighbours spend a third of that on new photography. The character for whom I felt a pang of empathy ended up predictably snuffed out. And, try as I may, I couldn't feel anything for the beautiful people who were destined to be together from the opening chapter, but not before they engaged in sexual antics with unsuitable partners.

TOO CLOSE TO HOME by Linwood Barclay (2008)

Aside from Andrew Pyper's gripping and chilling THE KILLING CIRCLE, I have rarely been so disturbed by a crime fiction novel. Barclay manages to create a world that feels too close to home itself with characters who are flawed with real human instincts, so believable that I began to wonder if I were one of them.

A triple murder takes place in rural upstate New York. The folks next door, the Langleys, are shot execution style in their home, while Adam Langley's best friend Derek Cutter cowers in their basement, witnessing their deaths by the sounds above him and one of the gunmen uttering simply, "shame."

Soon enough Derek's parents, Jim and Ellen, are drawn in to the darkness that threatens to destroy them all as well as the reputation of the mayor and the college president.

I couldn't wait to finish reading this caper, but there were parts that I had to read in daylight

A CURE FOR ALL DISEASES by Reginald Hill (2008)

This is one of the books praised by CBC Radio's mystery panel over the holidays, and my copy arrived last week at my local Toronto Public Library branch. I haven't read any other novels by Hill, but the wit and dialect and playfulness of this one have piqued my curiosity and I'll be looking for back titles on the shelves.

The novel opens with Detective Andy Dalziel convalescing in a peaceful seaside rehab centre in Sandytown. Dalziel has been given a handheld digital voice recorder as part of his psychological therapy and he christens the brushed nickle machine "Mildred" and confides all to her, from his intended trysts to his observations about the locals.

Two principal landowners in the sleepy seaside town seem to have different agendas about the town's intended development and one of them ends up murdered in a gruesome way.

The complimentary plot line, like a complimentary therapy itself, is provided through emails from budding psychologist Charlotte Heywood to her sister who is nursing in Africa. Charley rattles on about the locals and then immerses herself in the case especially as the corpses begin to pile up.

I felt like I could sit down and have a pint with Dalziel and any number of the peculiar locals in a town where indeed death is the cure for all diseases.

WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS? by Kate Atkinson (2008)

Ostensibly another Jackson Brodie mystery, this Atkinson yarn links the stories of Dr. Joanna Hunter, Detective Brodie, his almost paramour Louise (now married to a widowed orthopedic surgeon), convicted killer Andrew Decker and Reggie, a young orphaned nanny getting private tutoring to complete her A-levels in Greek and Latin.

Through predictable twists and turns demanded by fans of the genre, Atkinson weaves together each narrative with no ends even frayed by the conclusion of the novel. And, it's a smart read as well with Atkinson flexing her literary chops that earned her the Whitbread prize for best first novel with BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE MUSEUM--another must read in her portfolio.

THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL SOCIETY by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (2007)

If there is only one book you must read in these dreary and interminable winter months of little light and loads of snow (at least here in Toronto), it is this one. I haven't felt as transported by a tale, so completely rapt by its telling since I read TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD when I was thirteen.

This epistolary gem follows the life of British writer Juliet Ashton in 1946 who quite by accident receives a letter from Dawsey Adams, a resident of Guernsey, who has read a book about Charles Lamb in which Juliet's name and address are inscribed in the flyleaf. That book changes Dawsey's life and Juliet's too. She becomes entranced by their correspondence and what is revealed about the German occupation of that Channel island during World War II.

This is a book for people who love to read and who understand the balm that a well-told tale provides, that literature can be a life force.

There are many wonderful surprises here, not the least of which is the proof of the kindness of strangers many times told. Don't be surprised to find yourself searching, among other treasure hunts, for a children's story about a cat named Solange.

A MERCY by Toni Morrison (2008)

This is a quiet little novel (167 pages) by the Nobel laureate and Princeton professor who has made slave narratives her fictional voice.

Set during the infancy of the slave trade (1680s) when virulent religious and class divisions became entrenched in the Americas, race hatred takes root.

A MERCY follows the stories of several women: Florens, a small slave girl received as payment for a bad debt by a good Catholic plantation owner; Lina, an older servant in the same home whose tribe was decimated by small pox; Sorrow, a strange girl who spent her early years at sea dressed as a boy; Rebekka, the white mistress of the house, herself a victim of religious intolerance back in England, and Florens' mother who has to make the horrible decision to send her daughter away in order to save her.

THE BRUTAL HEART by Gail Bowen (2007)

I haven't read any of Bowen's other Joanne Kilbourn mysteries, but I will be reaching for them now on the bookshelves at my local library after this fast-paced and engaging read.

Joanne's legal eagle attorney husband Zack receives an upsetting call during the festivities of his 50th birthday fete in their backyard. It's the police with the news that a local call girl has been murdered and two of the names on her high-profile list of clients are Zack's and his friend Ned Osler's--and Zack is still reeling from Ned's recent suicide.

Zack is determined to reveal all truths, while Joanne, shocked by this revelation about Zack's sexual past, tries to muddle through by throwing herself into her work, a project on women and politics. How these two navigate hurt and negotiate a supportive and loving relationship is one of the unintended mysteries.

DOORS OPEN by Ian Rankin (2007)

This is Rankin's first non-Rebus novel and he departs from the detective as good guy here to profile an unlikely coterie of folks interested in an unusual art heist.

Mike Mackenzie is a self made man with millions to burn. When a longtime friend introduces him to a scheme to steal/replace art in a storage facility for the National Gallery, his avarice for owning a particular portrait, not likely ever to appear on the open market, gets the better of him and he agrees to participate.

Add a talented forger, hand-picked by the director of Edinburgh's art school, a lonely banker with an art-lover's passion and a known thug and you have an unlikely alliance where they are able to just about pull off the perfect crime. There's a meddlesome detective named Ransome, a Hell's angels operator named Hate and a greedy girlfriend who mess it all up.

I missed Rebus, but certainly allied myself with Mackenzie in his quest to impress the art auctioneer with the uncanny resemblance to the portrait he temporarily acquires.

PASSCHENDAELE by Paul Gross

Based on the screenplay by Paul Gross, the novel begins near the town of Arras where Sergeant Michael Dunne is leading his troop through a hornet's nest of Huns in the town square. He find himself thrusting a bayonet into the face of a young German soldier to kill him and to secure his own escape--it is this action that haunts Dunne for the rest of his life.

The narrative shifts to Calgary where Dunne is recovering in a military hospital from his physical and emotional wounds. There he meets volunteer nurse Sarah Mann, who is fighting her own psychological demons. When medical doctors decide Dunne has suffered shellshock, he is officially excused from serving again on the front and instead works in the recruiting office where the officer in charge encourages Dunne to ignore some of the enlisting rules in order to provide sufficient back up recruits for all of the fallen on the front.

In spite of his growing affection for Sarah, who he manages to help wean from a morphine addiction--in his greatest act of kindness--Dunne decides he must return to the front, however inappropriate that is or how broken he may be.

Back on the front near Ypres, the exhausted Canadian troops are about to participate in one of the bloodiest battles of the war. The description of the trenches and the bloated corpses, human and animal, that litter them is one of the strengths of this writing. It is visceral and surreal, but absolutely convincing.

EVERYONE WORTH KNOWING by Lauren Weisberger

Bette Robinson quits her Manhattan banking job and finds herself happily embracing sloth and organizing her day around Oprah and her favourite soaps and walking her 4-pound Yorkie, Millington. Her fashionable, rich and gay uncle introduces Bette to Kelly (his former personal assistant) who now runs Manhattan's hottest PR firm and the city's biggest events for those rich and famous enough to see and be seen.

Bette finds herself dating an infamous British playboy and thrills her boss by appearing in all of the gossip rags, thereby providing desirable exposure to the firm. This fast life of black Amex cards and Cristal wears thin on Bette and she walks out of the Playboy fete that she was responsible for running in an attempt to reclaim her old self, which is somewhere between the values of her Hippie parents and the spoiled life to which she has become accustomed.

PEGASUS DESCENDING by James Lee Burke

Detective Dave Robichaux finds his past isn't completely past when his murdered friend Dallas Klein's daughter Trish, a suspected grifter, shows up in town counting cards at blackjack tables and then involves herself with his longtime buddy and P.I. Clete Purcell who has a weakness for damaged women.

At Dave's day job he is put on the case of a young woman who has apparently committed suicide after being raped repeatedly at a frat house. Investigating that case leads him back to an unsolved murder of Crustacean Man, an unidentified homeless wino who had died as a result of a hit and run that Dave traces back to the Lujan family who also seem to be implicated in the death of Cesaire Darbonne's daughter.

Throughout the investigation tempers flair and Dave finds himself pounding his fist into the face of the sleazy D.A. in defense of his lesbian boss, the unflappable Helen Soileau. When his own family is threatened, Dave seeks vigilante justice with full time thug Lefty Raguzza. Although Dave behaves with his own moral code, you can forgive him just as his wife Molly does (she's a former Roman Catholic nun) because he is almost always right.

James Lee Burke writes convincing characters with true human frailty and scripts a plot at breakneck speed. I'll be reading as many of his books as I can find.

THE NEW YORKERS by Cathleen Shine

In a neighborhood peopled with lonely, hardworking folks, you meet Polly and her brother George and their puppy Howdy who came with the apartment, Jody and her aging pitbull Beatrice, gay restauranteur Jamie and his cairn terriers and divorce Everett who is suffering from empty nest syndrome now that his daughter is away at university. Each character's life bleeds into each other's and they each find love and meaning in unexpected ways.

THAT SUMMER IN PARIS by Morley Callaghan

Take a trip back to the halcyon ex-pat days in Paris of 1929 with Morley and his wife Loretta as they insinuate themselves into the lives of the Fitzgeralds ( yes, F. Scott and Zelda) and the Hemingways as each of those men build their writerly careers. Don't bat an eyelash when the abstract painter Miro carries Ernest's bag of boxing gear and acts as timekeeper in one of his friendly matches with Morley, or even turn your head when James Joyce invites them to stop by while he plays a recording of the suffragist Aimee Semple Macpherson.

The tenderness with which Callaghan recounts those luminescent days will encourage you to savour each beautifully wrought anecdote and will have you reaching for the novels each of those men were writing at that time: TENDER IS THE NIGHT; A FAREWELL TO ARMS and IT'S NEVER OVER.