Westlake, Donald E. Trust Me on This (1988) Mysterious Press, 292 pages, $5.50 paperback ISBN 0 445 40807 3 This send-up of tabloid journalism is the precursor to Baby, Would I Lie?. Young reporter Sara Joslyn has just lost her job when the small New England newspaper she worked for was bought out, […]
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Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton Houghton Mifflin, 1998Hardcover, 326 pagesISBN 0-395-65489-0 Billy Tipton was a musician and entertainer who flourished during the 1930’s and 1940’s. When paramedics arrived to treat Billy after he had collapsed at home in January 1989, Billy’s adopted son William, who had placed the 911 call,
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Westlake, Donald E. The Hot Rock (1970) Simon and Schuster, 249 pages, $5.95 hardcover ISBN 671 20541 2 The Hot Rock introduces John Archibald Dortmunder, the criminal you can’t help but like. According to William L. DeAndrea in Encyclopedia Mysteriosa, Westlake’s “most successful comic novels, the Dortmunder series, grew directly from the grim
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Listed alphabetically by author Austen, Jane. Emma Berendt, John. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Davies, Robertson. The Cunning Man DeLillo, Don. Underworld Ellroy, James. L.A.Confidential Erdrich, Louise. The Antelope Wife Frazier, Charles. Cold Mountain Hamilton, Jane. The Book of Ruth Irving, John. The Cider House Rules Lefkowitz, Bernard. Our Guys: The Glen
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O’Connell, Carol. Judas Child (1998) G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 340 pages, $24.95 hardcover ISBN 0 399 14380 7 Readers disappointed that Carol O’Connell’s latest novel doesn’t feature Kathleen Mallory will quickly forget their displeasure once they begin reading Judas Child. This is the most chillingly effective psychological novel I’ve read in a long time.
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O’Connell, Carol. Stone Angel (1997) G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 341 pages, $24.95 hardcover ISBN 0 399 14234 7 In Stone Angel Charles Butler tracks Mallory to Dayborn, Louisiana, where she’s gone in search of her past: “Though she had buried it deep, the act had come back in bits and pieces of unguarded thoughts
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McDonnell, Jane Taylor. Living to Tell the Tale: A Guide to Writing Memoir Penguin, 1998Paperback, 161 pagesISBN 0-14-026530-9 Jane Taylor McDonnell is the mother of an autistic child. When she set out to write a memoir about her experience, she found there were no instruction manuals on how to write what she calls “crisis memoirs.” Living
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O’Connell, Carol. Killing Critics (1996) G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 309 pages, $23.95 hardcover ISBN 0 39914168 5 I found this to be the least enjoyable of O’Connell’s Mallory books. In this installment, an art-related murder leads Mallory back to an unsolved brutal double homicide Markowitz had worked on 12 years earlier. The plot of
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Lefkowitz, Bernard. Our Guys: The Glen Ridge Rape and the Secret Life of the Perfect Suburb University of California Press, 1997Hardcover, 443 pages ISBN 0-520-20596-0 In March 1989 a group of boys in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, lured a 17-year-old developmentally disabled girl to a basement where they sexually abused her with a broomstick and a baseball
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Update: April 2022 When Lucy Grealy died in December 2002 at the age of 39, her death was ruled an accidental overdose. Later her close friend, novelist Ann Patchett, commemorated their relationship in the memoir Truth and Beauty: A Friendship. I wrote my review (below) of Grealy’s memoir before her death. Books by Lucy
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