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A Wink and a Smile, Anthology

This anthology of short love stories, all guaranteed to end happily, is a charming read. I don't read anthologies often, but I'm always glad when I do because I find the variety of styles around a central theme fascinating. It's like watching eighteen writers show you their approach to solving a particular problem, in this case, what's called the 'meet cute' (girl meets boy, etc.), in a compact space.

I recommend the book as a whole, which is full of cute, funny moments. Several of the stories stood out for me on cleverness of concept ("Critical Error" by Meg Overman, "Cupid's Arrow" by Tricia Schneider), and then there are some that really melted my heart ("Afterlife" by Dev Bentham, "Damage, Cosmetic Only" by Anita Goveas, and "The Wheels On The Bus" by Ilene Goldman). Lots of fun, great read!

The Night Manager, John le Carré

Fathers' Day, in my memory as a child, was almost invariably marked by a ceremonial present of the latest le Carré novel from my dad to my grandfather. I had never read one, but I'm reading a mix of romance and espionage at the moment and had recently rented the 2016 TV miniseries, which is excellent. One of the absolutely fascinating things was seeing the way the 2016 miniseries had adapted le Carré's book, which was published in 1993: the primary action is moved from Panama to Afghanistan, for example.

Le Carré is a brilliant writer: not just in terms of the convoluted details of Intelligence bureaucracy, but his often unexpectedly poetic sentences (Jonathan is described as being a "graduate of a rainy archipelago of orphanages, foster homes, half-mothers, cadet units and training camps") , and then, of course, the dazzling way his characters talk to one another. Major Corkoran is priceless. Roper's language changes, depending on his mood, and the MI6 characters make me grieve for the British public school education I never had. One of my favorite bits is the interview in which Corkoran (who uses the plural) is grilling Jonathan about his past:

"Smoke ourselves, do we, heart? In better times?"
"A bit."
"What times are they, old love?"
"Cooking."
"Can't hear us."
"Cooking. When I'm taking a break from hoteling."
Major Corkoran became all enthusiasm. "I must say, not a word of a lie. Bloody good grub you ran us up at Mama's before you saved the side that night. Were those sauced-up mussels all our own work?"
"Yes."
"Finger-lickin' good. How about the carrot cake? We scored a bull's-eye there, I can tell you. Chief's favorite. Flown in, was it?"
"I made it."
"Come again, old boy?"
"I made it."
Corkoran was robbed of words. "You mean you made the carrot cake? Our own tiny hands? Old love. Heart."

All this combined with him being absolutely ruthless and Jonathan in danger of losing his life if his identity is exposed.

Here's what I'm not crazy about, and it's understandable, but le Carré comes out of a male-dominated world in which women are side characters who exist in the story primarily for the hero, and the older I get, the less I'm interested in "lone wolf" men with no familial attachments, who seem to find an attractive, willing 20-something in every port along their journey while cherishing some attachment to 'the one woman' they 'really' love (Charles McCarry's The Shanghai Factor does the same thing).

There is a very moving section at the end of The Night Manager where Jonathan draws strength and inspiration through his worst trials from his imaginary conversations with a madonna-like Sophie (now long dead), but he's been getting around quite a bit in the meantime and is in the middle of a relationship with Roper's mistress, Jed, the woman he'll go on to live happily ever after with. It's sweet, but one can't help reflecting it sucks to be Sophie. This idea that a man can be considered, without irony, to be faithful, in love, while sleeping with multiple (disposable) women, makes me wonder if a lot of men have a different concept of fidelity. The best I could do was to imagine mourning a beloved first wife while moving on to a second, but I struggled to emotionally connect with the otherwise appealing Jonathan because of this.

Still, it's a brilliant book, and I look forward to reading more by him.

A Study in Scarlet Women, Sherry Thomas

I've read four Sherry Thomas books now, back-to-back, and each one, I think "Okay, this is my favorite!" She is whip-smart, and she writes beautifully, and I quickly get sucked in and care deeply about her characters. I ADORE the late 19th century period, and Thomas writes with just the right balance of research and description: enough to make the setting real, but not heavy-handed.

I'm highlighting A Study in Scarlet Women, the first in her 'Charlotte Holmes' mystery series: it's fascinating and funny and very clever, with several interlocking mysteries. It captures the 'feel' and delight of reading Sherlock Holmes, but without the dated misogyny of the original that now subtly grates on me. I can't wait to read A Conspiracy in Belgravia, the second mystery in the series!

I also read her historical romances, My Beloved Enemy, Not Quite a Husband, and His At Night. Absolutely loved each one. Despite the 'breathless' covers, these are hands down the best romances I've read to date: smart, well-researched, and emotionally engaging. I loved the setting of the first two (colonial Chinese Turkistan and northern India, respectively), which I found fascinating and fresh, and the third (His At Night) is a clever 'spy vs. spy'-style romance that reminded me of everything I love about The Scarlet Pimpernel. Thomas is the latest addition to my favorite authors, and I'm in the middle of reading everything she's written.

The Ghost Shift, John Gapper

Contemporary spy novel/murder mystery set in Hong Kong. I thought there were two particularly brilliant things about this: 1) The protagonist finds herself reliving the steps (with small variations) of the murder victim's last days and hours; 2) The setting is incredibly creepy because there's this pervasive sense of being nobody, a person with no rights, whether that's the Guangdong factory, or the CIA black site. There's a nefarious mystery plot, of course, but the factory chapters with the description of the living and working conditions should be required reading for all Americans.

Beauty and the Clockwork Beast, Nancy Campbell Allen

The concept here is absolutely brilliant: setting a 'Beauty & the Beast' story in steampunk/Gothic. I have a weakness for all three, and I loved the feel of this world. I was hoping for a little more weirdness - too many inventions, like the mechanical horseless carriage, felt like easy equivalents for our own world, especially the ability to 'telescribe' other people, which sounded a lot like texting.

I like very strong plots with a clear sense of what we're doing and where we're going (while hoping to be surprised), and for me the first two-thirds of the book was missing that sense of urgency. But I kept going, because I liked the world and the concept; I did feel like it picked up, and I thoroughly enjoyed the last third.

The characters did not grab me by the heart, although this is probably no fault of the author's, and I really, really shouldn't complain, because Allen is well within the tradition. I'm personally fed up with Mr. Rochester-style heroes and spunky, liberated heroines. I suppose this is part of what you ask for when you pick up a 'Beauty & the Beast' story, but to me, the core of the story is the question whether Beauty will be able to see and love the Beast for who he is (how he acts, what he says), despite his repulsive exterior. It seems to me that this has been flipped, and what we get (over and over) are devastatingly handsome 'beasts' who behave rudely, and the question has morphed into something like whether Beauty will have the courage to stand up to this jerk and sass him right back. ARRG!

Again, I'm in the minority.

I do understand 'the beast' is a metaphor for overwhelming male sexuality, and we expect (at least in fantasy), that a spunky, liberated woman will be able to meet him at his level and transform the 'danger' into a mutually satisfying relationship. I think this is a rather limited view of male sexuality, however (physically dominating, inclining toward brutish).

I also think it's a rather narrow view of female strength: the heroines I really bond with, like Jane Eyre, like Marian Halcombe in The Woman in White, are not overtly pretty, they do not move freely in their society, they do not speak freely in front of anyone who will listen, they are incredibly vulnerable--and yet, they dig deep and find courage, against the odds, in the midst of their terror.

Beauty and the Billionaire, Barbara Dunlop

I'm on a 'Beauty & the Beast' retellings jag. Dunlop's novella is what I would call a 'fantasy romance' - he & his Platinum Amex take her off to Paris for a 'Pretty Woman' style high-fashion makeover - but it is textbook perfect for the genre and hits all the marks. The main characters are devastating good-looking, confident, and successful, which is almost a given for the genre (possibly a necessity); I tend to go for less showy protagonists, like Connie Willis' nerdy & sweet male leads. I know it's supposed to be fantasy (pretend he's gorgeous; pretend you're gorgeous), but people like this feel unrelatable to me and don't snag my heart. Still, Dunlop deserves credit for a well-executed, squarely-in-the-genre novella. There is a lot of verbal repartee filled with teasing innuendo along the way that makes it a fun read.

Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin Kwan

About the same time as I picked up Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians, I saw this in my twitter feed from the Dalai Lama:

and it hit me like a ton of bricks, but Kwan's beau monde comedy of manners (and snobbery) is such a searing illustration. These characters live in the height of luxury at the top of society (not just rich, but 'crazy rich') and yet most of them are miserable, either through envy or a fear of falling behind or more personal, private heartaches.

I expected the book to be more...gossipy? Catty tell-all? More of a beach read at any rate. But the suffering is so human that I couldn't get into the comedy. Perhaps a different reader. Or maybe Kwan wants us to feel it less as a comedy. It reminded me, for some reason, of Proust (A LOT more readable, though), in its 'slice of life at the top,' and the subtle repulsion with what he witnesses around him. Utterly fascinating. I particularly like the way Kwan changes up his narrative style: mostly in third-person omniscient, but including other narrative devices such as IM exchanges, newspaper notices, magazine articles, etc.

It took me a little bit to get into--Kwan provides family trees at the beginning, but there are ton of characters, and it took me a while to warm up to them, but I was hooked by the end and went straight into the sequel, China Rich Girlfriend, which I enjoyed immensely. Looking forward to the third book in the series, Rich People Problems.

"One Nite in Mongkok" (2004)

Surprised by how much I liked this movie that follows a group of cops and a hit man on a mission over a 3-day stretch in a district of Hong Kong.

Half of what I like is director Derek Yee's style, which has the feel of a documentary instead of a movie: for all the car chases I've seen in my life, this the first film I can remember that includes a scene in which the cops and paramedics are actually dealing with the aftermath. All the violence feels more real - not that that's something I enjoy seeing, but it treats the characters as human beings. There is a phenomenal scene in which an older cop tries to get through to a rookie that 'bad' people are still people.

The other half of what I found so fascinating is what I would call the 'morality play', as the cops progressively transgress the rules, while Lai Fu (the hit man), struggles upwards towards a kind of redemption. Only a young Daniel Wu (or a young Matt Damon) could pull off this 'hit man with a heart of gold' character, but it's beautiful. There was A LOT in the middle of the movie that reminded me of the first Jason Bourne movie, although Yee's vision is darker and won't allow his character to escape. I got totally sucked in. Loved it, even if the end broke my heart.

Cinderella stories

I recently stumbled across two GREAT versions of the Cinderella story that made me think about it in a completely new way. The first was The Rough-Face Girl, an Algonquin Indian version of the tale, retold by Rafe Martin: absolute gorgeous. The girl's two older sisters set out, decked out in their finest, to 'marry the Invisible Being,' only to be exposed as being ignorant of his appearance (true nature). The rough-face girl goes next, piecing together her bridal attire out of simple, broken things, but when challenged, she speaks clearly of the Invisible Being for, she says, she sees him everywhere in the natural world. He and his sister (the guardian) see her immediately as she is inside, and not the outside, and accept her joyfully. It's pretty amazing. No fairy godmother needed to help Cinderella get to or catch the prince's eye.

imdb link

The second thing was the Cantonese movie "Jump" (2009), in which a country girl moves to Shanghai and works in a factory and as a custodian at a dance school in order to pursue her dream of becoming a hip-hop/street dancer, attracting the notice of a 'prince' along the way. Sounds like standard stuff on the surface, doesn't it? But for one thing, this Cinderella works WAY harder than any other I've come across. Half the movie is montages of her singing, dancing, laughing as she cleans toilets, mops floors, hauls garbage, irons, sews, etc. What is really amazing about this version, though, is that the film doesn't feel sorry for her. They don't present her circumstances as miserable or depressing. There is a fantastic moment in which she curiously asks the prince on their first 'date' what's the happiest day he can remember. Surprised, he comes up with something involving money. Equally surprised, she tells him the happiest day she can remember was one morning, working in the fields, and seeing a rainbow after a rainstorm.

What I realized is that I've always thought of the transformation in the Cinderella story as a reward for all her previous, miserable, hard work. She's earned that tiara. What these two versions made me realize is that you can 'read' Cinderella as the kind of sage Joseph Campbell refers to as 'Master of the Two Worlds': someone who has seen through the world of maya to the underlying beauty, and that is what makes her worthy of her final ascension (Campbell talks about 'Marriage to the Goddess' because most of the stories he looks at feature male heroes). The story takes on a gnostic quality and becomes about values, contrasting those who cannot see and are stuck in the world of appearance with the one who sees 'underneath,' whose true beauty can be recognized 'within.'

Hungry Tigress (The Way of the Tigress Book 2), Jade Lee

Ignore the cover.

I thought I had this book pretty much pegged as a period erotic romance set in 1900 Shanghai. There's a lot of talk about channeling sensual pleasure into a spiritual quest which I took as tongue-in-cheek right up until the ecstatic vision in which an angel literally tells the hero and heroine they are beings of love and the heroine realizes:

     "All the tiny pieces of herself--her body, her soul, her heart and mind--all those things were made up of love. That was the core of who she was; that was at the center of everything. She was a creature of love--created by love to embody love, and to express love in all its myriad forms. She had merely forgotten.
     "As had everyone else. Because they too--Zou Tun, her father, every soul on the planet--came from the same source. They all had the same center of love. They all had merely forgotten."

It would sound hokey if I didn't believe it (although I'm less sure about the angel part). So there I was, at three-quarters of the way through, completely rethinking what the book was about. And then there are the Lao Tzu quotes which begin each chapter--I got a surprising amount from reflecting on those along the way.

Lee gets kudos in my estimation for not just hinting around, but daring to explode reality-as-we-know-it in her narrative. It's a very powerful moment. One of the most interesting things to me, however, is how the characters try to integrate their vision back into everyday life, which turns out to be really hard. One of Lee's profound insights, I think, is that lying damages the connection to whatever the divine is.

The Shanghai Factor, Charles McCarry

I picked this up thinking I was in for a contemporary spy novel--something à la Jason Bourne--only to find it's really more a Kafka-esque work of existentialist fiction, which was utterly fascinating. The narrator wanders through the story, fundamentally unclear on what it is he's doing, or why. He receives cryptic messages he often doesn't know, or remember, how to decipher, or even if they are real messages. He interacts with people who might be friends, or enemies, or complete strangers. A lot of the fun of the book is the clever, fencing dialogue in which each party tries to mislead or at least reveal as little as possible. There is a great deal of humor in the book, all very dry. 

The clearest statement of the existentialist underpinning of the book comes on page 109:

the truth was that I had become a secret agent because I could not bear for another minute the pointlessness of life in the real world.... If the craft meant nothing, at least it was done in something like absolute privacy, as if everything was happening in another time, another universe, another state of consciousness. Its joys were palpable. For years I had been left alone to enjoy the pleasures of learning to speak and read an ancient and beautiful language and the company of a brilliant woman who loved sex. If that wasn't a blessed state of being, what was? What difference did it make if the work I did meant nothing, accomplished nothing, burned up money on an epic scale? What human endeavor was any different?

Colin Wilson would have recognized this man at once as belonging to his collection of "outsiders."

I spent a large portion of my teens, twenties, and thirties--well, let's just say the bulk of my young intellectual life--wildly enamored of Existentialism (although I never liked Sartre, who I think is overrated). I still like its focus on subjective experience, its questioning of values, and the driving search for meaning. The problem, I think, is when someone gives up on finding anything. Or, like Terry Gilliam's movies suggest, gives up on the external, real world in favor of the creative interior of the imagination.

Becoming a parent changed everything for me, although not quite in the way I had expected or hoped, but I became keenly, painfully aware of dependence and responsibility. When a child needs you to feed or clothe or comfort them, questions of 'meaning' and the futility of action really evaporate. If they don't--if there's still some 'maybe I will, maybe I won't,' or 'I could, but why?'--I think that qualifies as being a sociopath, unable to empathically connect or experience another human being's joy or pain. The outsiders Wilson studied were all men, unattached, (white). They are in some ways too free, too independent. They don't need others and don't see that others might need them. Because they can do whatever they like, they don't see a reason to do any of it. Even staying alive doesn't seem like a worthwhile endeavor. (I am loosely characterizing.)

It's revealing to me that the narrator of Shanghai Factor moves through his world without real human connection. The closest he comes to an enduring relationship is his regret over losing Mei, (the brilliant woman who loved sex), another spy who never asks him questions or tells him anything about herself. When he is told the missing Mei has been imprisoned and probably tortured, it doesn't change the trajectory of his action. In fact, he finds (yet another) woman to sleep with. When he learns Mei left him to have an abortion, for which he was 50% genetically responsible, he shrugs it off (and returns to another woman). Nothing sticks. Nothing motivates. There is a deadness inside, which he (I suspect the author himself) might just say is 'how he is,' or be perversely proud of as a sign of intellectual superiority, but I think it's a failure to make the effort to engage. Even if you do not see a need for other people, you ought to be able to see you are needed. If there's no meaning to acting for yourself, there are other people who desperately need you to act on their behalf.

It doesn't have to be children, of course. Having an artistic endeavor (or long-term project) can also powerfully orient one's life. But I've become more and more interested in the social component to human thriving. I heard a fantastic podcast recently in which Ezra Klein interviewed Johann Hari about his new book, which interests me greatly as an antidote:

The Dry, Jane Harper

Intriguing mystery set in contemporary rural Australia--Harper doesn't need me to praise her because she's already garnered awards, movie rights, and a sequel, for which I congratulate her. The book is oddly gripping, with a nice, surprise twist, although I personally wanted the mystery to be more complex. Still works.

A great deal of the book is unearthing the events and relationships of the past, told in a series of italicized flashbacks. I prefer to watch characters relieve their past memories in real time as opposed to these self-contained flashbacks, but it works, right up until the end, where the whole thing falls apart: Unable to narrate the last, unsolved murder, Harper resorts to the main character finding a diary and then switches to a third-person omniscient italicized flashback--information, in other words, that neither the writer nor the reader of the diary would have access to. This was a deal-breaker for me. I think as an author you either come up with a different way to convey that, or you scrap the entire strategy of telling the past through flashbacks.

The Man of the House, Evelyn Ellis

I found Ellis because she publishes in a consortium with Catherine Lloyd. I thought the premise of this book--a forbidden romance between a governess and the "Mr. Hyde" side of her employer Dr. Jekyll's character--was intriguing. I would love to write a Jekyll/Hyde book someday, but in the style of Wilkie Collins' Woman in White (which I love): a series of Victorian-era court documents.

Love Rising, Catherine Lloyd

This the last book in Lloyd's 4-part "Mandrake Falls" series, and you do need to read them in order because the books build on each other in a really fun way. The couple in Book 1 ("The Jilting") probably moved me the most, but I think Book 4 is the best constructed and most satisfying. I enjoy Lloyd's Gothic romances, but it's the decent men, the considerate, kind men struggling to do what's right who make my knees weak. I love these books!

Windemere Hall, Catherine Lloyd

I really, really enjoyed this (You can buy the complete novel or the serialized three parts). It reminded me of everything I love about Jane Eyre, but with an extra frisson of eroticism.

I LOVE this heroine, who is both vulnerable and has reserves of inner strength, like Jane Eyre, and I loved this hero (reminiscent of both Heathcliff and Rochester) because Lloyd so compelling presents his yearning to love and be loved that all human beings share. Too often a Romance author will convince me that the hero desires the heroine physically--and may even throw in a good deal of language about love--but Lloyd convinces me her men love, that their hearts will break, are breaking, and I can't help but root for these people to find each other.

Mud Season, Bethany Marcello

A small town romance in the honorable mention category. I wanted a little more from the end, but, my god, it had me by the heartstrings all the way there. Would have read it in one sitting if I could have. Interested to read more by this author.

Lie For Me, Catherine Lloyd

While polishing my new manuscript, I've been on a small town romance novella kick. This is hands-down my favorite right now, although there are a couple other honorable mentions.

Lie For Me is one of those hate-love romances, which is not normally my thing, but I liked the main characters so much (sucker for small town sheriffs!), and I just had a blast reading it, rooting for these two. Totally fun and made me go 'Aww' at the end - what more can one ask?

Been writing

On a writing jag.

Murder Bay, David R. Horwitz

A really outstanding historical mystery that combines procedural and paranormal elements. I was blown away by the mastery of two time periods, neither the author's own, of 1862 and 1957. Both were fascinating and deeply researched. Horwitz moves effortlessly from Civil War military history to civilian history of the same period, with enormous detail in geographical locations and the characters' backstories. In the 1950s, descriptions of characters doing even ordinary things, like taking a photo with a camera, were captured perfectly.

My very, very favorite part is a tiny bit toward the end, in one of the 1860s segments, in which the young boy is scared by an apparition of Ben, the 1950s cop to whom these ghosts have been appearing - so that there was kind of a weird time-periods bleeding through in both directions, past simultaneously present. Absolutely amazing.

Regrettably, the book was published posthumously and appears to be the only published novel by Horwitz, which is a great loss.

A Door in the River, Inger Ash Wolfe

I love, love, love this small town Canadian mystery series.

You do need to read them in order, so start with The Calling. I'm going to read The Night Bell (Book 4) over again, which I read first, because now I feel like I really know these characters and I'll get the full resonance. Mostly, I suspect, I just want to keep reading about Hazel Micallef and James Wingate.

I am waiting, hoping, there will be more mysteries in this series!

The Taken, Inger Ash Wolfe

Book 2 of the Hazel Micallef mysteries. In some ways, this is my favorite so far because it's just as clever and funny, but not quite, quite as gruesome (although there are some searing visuals - fishhooks, ugh!).

Running through this book there is a particularly brilliant story-within-a-story with three (!) different (fictional) authors, which was absolutely fantastic. I am tapping my feet with impatience to get Book 3, "A Door in a River," while simultaneously regretting burning through the series so quickly. Please, Michael Redhill, write more!

8 Class Pets + 1 Squirrel ÷ 1 Dog = Chaos, Vivian Vande Velde

A laugh-out-loud riot. I read this to my daughter and was utterly charmed. Velde has a poet's gift for words, giving each of the animals a fresh and distinctive voice. I can't recommend highly enough!

Emma, Jane Austen

I picked up Emma because I was hankering for Austen and I hadn't read it since I was a YA, or thereabouts. I remember that I hadn't liked it enormously at the time - Emma makes a lot of painful mistakes; Mr. Knightly seemed very remote, critical, and unromantic - but the book absolutely grabbed me by the heart this time.

I don't know what it was: perhaps because I'm in a position of trying (imperfectly) to educate young ladies, or because I'm more alive to my own errors, or because I've come to appreciate Mr. Knightly's character in a different light. Austen's books, to me, are all exquisite morality studies (in fine pencil, with very delicate shades of grays), in which characters' ridiculousness, often ugliness, are exposed, which almost always, transparently, trace back to raw egoism.

I think Emma is remarkable partly because of Miss Bates, who is described as being silly and tiresome, and yet with a sweetness of heart which the narrator calls out as making her worth of respect, whereas most of Austen's overtly comic characters are simply ridiculous. There is a tremendous contrast between Miss Bates' repetitive, disconnected effusions, and the horrible pretension and hypocrisy of Mrs. Elton. I also love the contrast between Frank Churchill and Mr. Knightly, where Frank, who enters the scene as a dashing, romantic hero, is revealed to be selfish, occasionally malicious, and immature. Mr. Darcy will probably always be the best of Austen's heroes, but I admire Mr. Knightly more because unlike Mr. Darcy he is generous enough to dance when he does not want to dance.

After finishing the book, I watched my way through all the film versions, and this time, discovered the BBC Masterpiece Classic 2009 mini-series with Romola Garai and Jonny Lee Miller. Sandy Welch, who has adapted a number of period dramas, plays fast and loose at times with the original, but this version absolutely captures the core of the story in a way none of the other versions do. If you haven't seen it, I highly, highly recommend it (available on Netflix). Garai engages and knocks it out of the park. Miller's Mr. Knightly bears a strong resemblance to his Sherlock in Elementary: careful, observant, concerned with truth and right.

Dry Bones in the Valley, Tom Bouman

Very beautifully written - the descriptive passages, ranging from natural beauty to the sordid dwellings, were haunting. Terrific mystery with several nice, unexpected twists. Just overall a brilliant book. I'm looking forward to reading the second in Bouman's series!

Later: My only regret, the more I think about it, is that I wish the case had been tied to the land rights. The nephew would have been a fantastically unexpected villain.

The Calling, Inger Ash Wolfe

Recently read "The Night Bell," which I loved so much I'm starting over at the beginning with the first book in the Hazel Micallef series. The villain drives the book here - completely creepy and fascinating, unforgettable. Detectives Micallef and Wingate are smart and wryly funny and have appealing fissures of rawness. Can't wait to read the next book!

A Brilliant Death, Robin Yocum

Fantastic book. The historical setting--1970s Brilliant, Ohio--is 9/10ths of what makes this coming-of-age/murder-investigation story a terrific read. Yocum is a former crime & investigative reporter, and I particularly enjoyed the paper trail-aspect of the case. A really great washed-up detective, Tornik, pops in and out of the story - I would have liked to see more of him - but the main plot belongs to Mitchell and Travis, a likeable team of teenage buddies trading barbs and snappy dialogue as they reconstruct the cold case of Travis' missing mother.