The River Wife

The River Wife, Jonis Agee, 2007, Random House. Genre: Fiction. 393 pages. Finished 5/29/12.

LesOpinion: Beginning with the New Madrid earthquake of 1811 and ending with Prohibition-era gangsters, Agee's The River Wife is a sweeping, literate, epic adventure replete with an array of powerful women, dangerous men, and vice versa. It is also jam-packed with a few more of my favorite topics: natural history, horses, and ghosts.

Well-written and suspenseful, this is the kind of book that makes the Quest worthwhile.

The Last Two Elizabeth Adler Novels I'll Ever Read

Now or Never, Elizabeth Adler, 1997, Delacorte. Genre: Romantic Suspense. 346 pages. Finished 5/18/2012.

Sooner or Later, Elizabeth Adler, 1998, Delacorte. Genre: Romantic Suspense. 358 pages. 5/21/2012.

Recipe for Elizabeth Adler suspense novel

1 c. grey-eyed, dark haired hero with a lean, yet muscular, physique

Pinch of masculine name (Jack, Jake, Dan)

1 c. spirited heroine (not so spirited as to overripen into assertive, bossy, or shrewish)

1 T. something French (wine, villages, crusty bread)

Stir well.  When plot thickens, add one psychopath.

Barely edit, whip off to Delacorte Press.

Cha ching!

(serves: no purpose)

The White Tiger

The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga, 2008, Free Press. Genre: Fiction. 276 pages. Finished 5/15/2012.

LesOpinion: I've not read many books about India by Indian writers, but this is certainly the first that didn't make it sound romantic, floral, and exotic. The India of Aravind Adiga is absurd, squalid, and plagued with the injustices of a contemporary caste system.

Told in the form of an epistolary confession, The White Tiger manages to be suspenseful, funny, and heartbreaking all at once.

Circumstances under which I recommend this book: You are demoralized from reading too many crappy books, and you need reminding that good literature has both the power to entertain and something important to say.

Invitation to Provence

Porch + Hammock + Dogs make Adler more palatable.

Invitation to Provence, Elizabeth Adler, 2004, St. Martin's Press. Genre: Romance. 321 pages. Finished 5/13/2012.

LesOpinion: One of the drawbacks of resuming the Quest is that clearing the Elizabeth Adler hurdle at the Field Memorial Library did not excuse me from having to read the Adler novels on the shelves of the S. White Dickinson.  Dammit to hell, Gentle Reader, dammit to hell.

Invitation to Provence is classic Adler, by which I mean stupid, implausible, lowest-common-denominator writing. It's not Official Roll-of-Toilet-Paper bad; it's more like "Your Vagina Makes You an Idiot" bad.

Best Moment Reading this Book: In sharing some of the craptastic language out loud with my dear Ms. Al, I learned that she thinks I share one quality with the hero, Jake Bronson.  Apparently, we both have "a large hand that knew how to punch out a man as well as how to gentle a nervous horse."

Or maybe it's the other way around?

The Alexander Cipher

The Alexander Cipher, Will Adams, 2009, Grand Central. Genre: Suspense. 320 pages. Finished 5/10/2012.

LesOpinion:  I was about 12 years old when I read my first suspense novel. I had wandered out of my usual sections of Upper Sandusky, Ohio's Carnegie Public Library--the horse tales, the Art Buchwald screeds, the Agatha Christie mysteries--and into the daunting "Adult Fiction" section. The novel was about a guy who accidentally witnesses some bikers kill an endangered California condor. Thus began my love affair with fast-paced books brimming with American-style violence.

Despite its English author and Egyptian setting, The Alexander Cipher is one of these books.  It is well-written, energetic, and has just enough cliffhangers to keep a reader turning the pages. Best yet, it was one of those books that made me look up Things I Don't Know Much About.

Great literature?  No.  Great fun?  Absolutely.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams, 1987, Simon & Schuster.  Genre:  SciFi.  247 pages.  Finished 5/7/2012.

LesOpinion:  What do Schrodinger's Cat, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and electric monks have in common? According to Douglas Adams, everything. This silly novel, a blend of science fiction and detective genres, is geared more to the adult reader than Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  And while the anti-science fiction reader in me kicked and screamed through the first fifty pages, I was eventually charmed by Adams's easygoing sense of humor, quick pace, and ridiculous characters.

Circumstances under which I recommend this book:  You're sitting in the doctor's office and the choice is between this and a ratty copy of Good Housekeeping.

The Room and the Chair

The Room and the Chair, Lorraine Adams, 2010, Knopf. Genre: Literary suspense.  315 pages.  Finished 5/1/2012.

LesOpinion:  This isn't your cubicle-mate's international suspense thriller.  This is Don DeLillo does Robert Ludlum via Toni Morrison.  It's part stream of consciousness, part spy tale, and part investigative journalism that takes us for a fast ride on a slow horse through the evils of contemporary war culture.  If you like your political thrillers to be tidy whodunnits, this isn't for you.  If you appreciate an author who can put two words together, has something to say about how we're all victims of (and complicit in the manufacture of) the same crazy machine, and builds suspense only to end it with a big, fat "what did you expect?" then read this book.  It is among the best of the Quest.