Miles Marshall Lewis on Mixed Couples in Paris

In his "Expat Diaries," Ebony Magazine's arts and culture editor, talks about race and culture in the US and France. Read the article here.

Tales of the Misbegotten Fairy Child

Tales of the Misbegotten: Fairy Child

By Katherine Tomlinson

 Dannon hated the changeling cases.

The Department had been making noises about creating a separate paranormal kidnapping squad to handle them but with the city's financial mess and the department's deep budget cuts, he knew that was never going to happen.

What Dannon hated the most was dealing with the mothers, most of whom had led charmed lives up until the moment the fairies took their babies and left something else behind.

Everyone knew it was the lucky ones who attracted the fairies' attention, the ones whose lives were envied, the ones whose lives seemed special.

Dannon had enough Irish in him to remember his grandmother telling him that a jealous look at a mother and her child was dangerous for them both and must always be followed by a blessing to ward off disaster.

Unless something bad was the intention.

The one good thing about the current string of changeling crimes, Dannon figured, was that it had put the kibosh on the practice of selling pictures of celebrity spawn.

Dannon hated dealing with celebrities almost as much as he hated dealing with vampires and a celebrity changeling case was a high-profile nightmare and the ordinary ones were bad too.

Dannon couldn't remember the number of times his team had been called to a house to deal with distraught parents who thought their baby was safe because they'd put an iron knife of a pair of scissors on top of the crib.

Book Review Wool (part 1) by Hugh Howey

When a free-thinking woman is hired to be the sheriff of a self-sustaining silo world, a revolution is sparked in part one of Hugh Howey's epic novel Wool.

Inside the Silo there is order, and that order is kept by adhering to the PACT and to the ORDER and to a set of rules. One of the worst crimes in the silo is voicing a desire for a better life. When the job of Sheriff becomes vacant, the current deputy does not want it and recommends Juliette Nichols for the job. Juliette, daughter of the man who keeps the silo's nurseries running, is not anxious to leave the mechanical level of the silo where she's worked for years tending to the respirators that recycle the Silo's air, but is eventually convinced to take the position.

Her decision upsets the delicate political balance inside the self-contained structure and leads to consequences no one could expect. Soon Juliette is asking a lot of inconvenient questions about how the Silo came into being and other secrets that the people in power have kept from its inhabitants.

Howey's "arkology" is set some few hundred years in the future. We’re not sure exactly where we are, although at one point, a character sees a map with ATLANTA written on it. There are some nice world-building touches here, including a ritualized funeral that includes throwing vegetables and fruits into the grave to symbolize the circle of life.

Poe man of the 80s

This is why I love Facebook. You can see silliness  like this photo of Edgar Allan Poe photoshopped to look  like a sleazy bad guy on Magnum PI.  Not sure where it originated.
And speaking of Poe (a belated happy birthday to the dark bard), his poetry is going to be an integral part of The Following, the Kevin Williamson-created television show starring Kevin Bacon and James Purefoy.

Bacon plays an FBI agent and Purefoy plays a literature professor specializing in romantic poetry whose real passion is murder. The series premieres on Fox this coming Monday and I cannot wait. There's an "Inside The Following" featurette up on IMDB, with images of crazy cultists in Poe masks killing people in honor of their idol, the charismatic killer played by Purefoy.

Book Review The Dead Do Not Improve by Jay Caspian Kang

If you like your noir leavened with humor and a lot of local color, you will LOVE Jay Caspian Kang's San Francisco-based, cross-cultural mystery, The Dead Do Not Improve.

THE DEAD DO NOT IMPROVE by Jay Caspian Kang

The lives of a detective and an under-employed Korean-American intersect when a woman is murdered in Jay Caspian Kang's novel The Dead Do Not Improve.

Philip Kim, a first-generation Korean-American, sleeps through the murder of his neighbor, Dolores Stone. He never knew her name until after the fact, just always called her the "Baby Molester," a name bestowed on her by Kathleen, the girl Philip followed to San Francisco and hasn’t talked to in a year.

Philip often sleeps late and just as often is late to his job, working for a social network that targets men who have been dumped. (getoverit.com). He is responsible for greeting the new accounts and sending them chatty emails every so often. For this he’s encouraged to use the named "Philip Davis" because research has convinced his boss that no one trusts Asians when it comes to relationship advice.

The man investigating the murder is Sid (short for Siddhartha) Finch, and he's more interested in saving his marriage to Sarah than in solving the crime which is, as is often the case, a gateway murder that leads to a much larger problem.

The dual stories are both interesting and the worlds of Finch and Philip are populated by extremely good characters. Philip's internal monologues often have to do with Korean identity and there's a running motif about the Korean-American school shooter at Virginia Tech.

Some of the dialogue is absolutely hilarious, particularly the interactions between Sid and the waitresses at a restaurant called Being Abundance, where everyone seems to have a reddish glow. There’s also a scene at a vintage clothing store where Philip and a neighbor suit up for Dolores’ bizarre funeral that seems incredibly and indelibly San Francisco.

Book Review Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre

Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre is the true story of Eddie Chapman, a criminal-turned-spy and his role as “Agent Zigzag” during WWII.  As always with Macintyre’s books, the characters here are first rate, with Chapman coming across as a character with a capital C.  He fascinated almost everyone he came into contact with, from the women who fell for his blue eyes to the man who “ran” him as an agent for MI5.  This was a man who made his living as a thief, but who also courted friendships with people like Noel Coward and a young filmmaker who went on to direct the first James Bond movie. 

Eddie Chapman/Agent Zigzag

Macintyre has a knack for taking footnotes in history and turning them into riveting non-fiction. The author does a terrific job of sketching out both time and place, wherever that time or place might be.  Whether he’s recounting the story of Eddie’s early crimes, the night he was arrested while dining with a date or his growing frustration in prison, there’s always an emotional underpinning to the scenes, and they spring from the pages in three dimensions.  The writer intersperses contemporary documents with his own narrative, so that we read accounts of Eddie’s crimes and exploits.  It gives a true immediacy to the events and brings us into his story. 

Stephan Graumann, the aristocratic German spymaster who "runs" Eddie in Germany is very much the antithesis of the clichéd German spy.  He’s an educated and intelligent man.  (And as we learn from the author’s graceful side trips into context, we know that the Abwehr was antithetical to Nazi culture.  Headed up by Admiral Canaris, who would later be executed for his part in a plot to kill Hitler, the German intelligence service sought to serve the country without serving the Fuhrer.)

The backdrop of events is elegant.  In fact, it’s about as far removed from modern-day spycraft, with its anonymous rooms and bland personalities as it is possible to be.  The Villa de la Bretonniere is an irresistible setting for Eddie’s schooling. 

Book Review The Gods of Gotham

In pre-Civil War New York, a reluctant cop must find a murderer preying on child prostitutes as tensions escalate between locals and Irish immigrants. Lindsay Faye's novel The Gods of Gotham has just been nominated for an Edgar Award and in a year that was filled with outstanding historical mysteries, from The Killing of Emma Gross to The Technologists, this book stands out.

There is meticulous attention to period detail and excellent character work. The writer offers up four plausible candidates for the role of the killer and the revelation of who’s responsible will come as a surprise even for a reader paying close attention.

Be warned though, the plot is so dark it makes Caleb Carr's The Angel of Darkness look like a Nancy Drew mystery with a portrait of a cold-hearted madam that is chilling. Fans of the BBC America series Copper may find this book particularly engaging with its blend of crime and politics.

In Gods of Gotham the hero and investigator is a former barman who becomes a "copper star" after his life savings bur up in a fire that destroys his lodging. Timothy Wilde is no stranger to the mean streets of the city but even he is shocked when a madam who specializes in child prostitutes is protected by the Democratic Party because she's a generous benefactor.

The characters here are rich and layered, and their relationships are believable and adult.

Timothy is a complex man but his older brother Valentine is even better. There’s something twisted and tweaked about him and when we find out what it is, it explains a lot. Then there's Mercy, the do-gooder who is Timothy's childhood friend and the love of his life. As with Timothy and Valentine, there's a lot more going on with her than meets the eye.

Timothy has a large and eclectic circle of friends that include a former "oysterman" and a group of "newsies" who have banded together in an informal family. His landlady, a baker's widow, has a life filled with sorrow and a practicality that serves Timothy well.

Father Sheehy, an Irish Catholic priest who helps Timothy, is what a priest should be—a man who is ready to defend his flock—at gunpoint if necessary—and who harbors a fine, fierce outrage over injustice. He reminds us a bit of characters from the works of Andrew Vachss where the protagonists are always on the childrens' side. Then there’s Matsell and Piest, Timothy’s colleagues on the police force. They both turn out to be (again) terrific characters.

It seems likely that this is the first in a series of books about these characters and the characters are up to the task of keeping readers interested from one book to the next.